Six local authors to be featured at 2017 Coffee and Conversation at Jefferson Parish Library

Six books from local authors will be featured during the 2017 season of Coffee and Conversation, a literary initiative sponsored by the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival and the Jefferson Parish Library. All events are free, open to the public and will be held in the meeting rooms of the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon Ave., Metairie. Books will be available for sale through the Friends of the Jefferson Public Library.

7 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 5: The Cemeteries of New Orleans, by Peter Dedek

In "The Cemeteries of New Orleans," Peter B. Dedek reveals the origins and evolution of the Crescent City’s world-famous necropolises, exploring both their distinctive architecture and their cultural impact. Spanning centuries, this body of research takes readers from muddy fields of crude burial markers to extravagantly designed cities of the dead, illuminating a vital and vulnerable piece of New Orleans’s identity.

Peter B. Dedek, author of "Historic Preservation for Designers" and "Hip to the Trip: A Cultural History of Route 66," is an associate professor at Texas State University, where he teaches history of design, historic preservation, and architectural history.

7 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 12: Carnival in Louisiana, by Brian Costello

From the revelers on horseback in Eunice and Mamou to the miles-long New Orleans parade routes lined with eager spectators shouting “Throw me something, mister!,” no other Louisiana tradition celebrates the Pelican State’s cultural heritage quite like Mardi Gras. In Carnival in Louisiana, Brian J. Costello offers Mardi Gras fans an insider’s look at the customs associated with this popular holiday and travels across the state to explore each area’s festivities.

Costello brings together the stories behind the tradition, gleaned from his research and personal involvement in Carnival. His fascinating tour of the season’s parades, balls, courirs, and other events held throughout Louisiana go beyond the well-known locales for Mardi Gras. Exploring the diverse cultural roots of statewide celebrations, Costello includes festivities in Lafayette, Baton Rouge, New Roads, and Shreveport. From venerable floats to satirical parades, exclusive events to spontaneous street parties, Carnival in Louisiana is an indispensable guide for Mardi Gras attendees, both veteran Krewe members seeking to expand their horizons and first-time tourists hoping to experience all sides of Louisiana’s favorite season.

Brian J. Costello, an eleventh generation Louisianan, has written many books on the state’s history. He is the historian of the Pointe Coupee Parish Library Historic Materials Collection and he reigned as King of the 2009 New Roads Lions Mardi Gras Carnival.

7 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 19: New Orleans: The First 300 Years by Errol Laborde

"New Orleans: The First 300 Years" is a joint venture between public television station WYES and Pelican Publishing Company with the support of the Historic New Orleans Collection. Twenty-two authors have contributed to 23 topics that explore the city over the last 300 years. “The book was inspired by The Past As Prelude, a publication released in 1968 on the occasion of the city’s 250th anniversary and published by Pelican Publishing Company and Tulane University. Distinguished journalist Hodding Carter was the editor. “Like that book, this publication will cover a range of topics,” says project editor Errol Laborde. “But it will also be visual containing great writing and images.” Book production supervision is by WYES Executive Producer Peggy Scott Laborde.

Errol Laborde, editor and publisher of Louisiana Life magazine, has won more than twenty-five New Orleans Press Club Awards for outstanding journalism since 1972. A producer and panelist on public television’s Informed Sources, an award-winning program that explores local politics, Laborde also is the founding president and a current board member of the annual Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival.

7 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 26: Mending from Memory: Sewing in Louisiana by Susan Tucker and Lee Grue

The contributors of this anthology are seamstresses, tailors, sewers, beaders, knitters, quiltmakers, and weavers. They describe an exuberance for the stitch, the knowledge that the lot can be solved by creativity with cloth, and the benefits of skills that make them content enough in well-lived lives. They are resourceful in their everyday pursuits, or as contributor Martha McFerren writes, they find that sewing is “a useful beauty.”

Another contributor, Arthur Pfister, says that the world spins around on “thimbles, pins, needles, tape measures, rulers, ribbons, scissors, spools of thread, yards of material from bolts of fabric of all patterns ‘on account’ from Mr. Levine (the rag man), zippers, buttons, and notions of all manner and stripes . . . from Krauss, McCrory’s, Woolworth’s, and Maison Blanche Annex.” This is the universe of people who sew, especially those in Louisiana.

Lee Meitzen Grue is a poet and a writer and long-time editor of the New Laurel Review. Susan Tucker is an archivist and editor whose works include "Telling Memories Among Southern Women" (1988) and other books on material culture and women’s education.

7 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 2: Cityscapes of New Orleans by Richard Campanella

Exploring the Crescent City from the ground up, Richard Campanella takes readers on a journey toward explaining the city's distinct urbanism and eccentricities. He reveals the why behind the where, delving into the historical and cultural forces that have shaped the spaces of New Orleans for more than three centuries.

For Campanella, every bewildering street grid and linguistic quirk has a story to tell about the landscape of Louisiana and its geography. It starts with an examination of neighborhoods, from the origins of faubourgs and wards to the impact of the slave trade on patterns of residence. Campanella explains how fragments of New Orleans streets continue to elude Google Maps and why humble Creole cottages sit alongside massive Greek Revival mansions. He considers the roles of modern urban planning, environmentalism, and preservation, all of which continue to influence the layout of the city and its suburbs. In the book's final section, Campanella explores the impact of natural disasters as well-known as Hurricane Katrina and as unfamiliar as "Sauve's Crevasse," an 1849 levee break that flooded more than 200 city blocks.

Richard Campanella, a geographer with the Tulane School of Architecture, is the author of nearly 200 articles about New Orleans and 10 books, including Bourbon Street: A History, Bienville's Dilemma, and Geographies of New Orleans. The only two-time winner of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Book of the Year Award, Campanella has also received the Louisiana Library Association's Literary Award, the Williams Prize for Louisiana History from The Historic New Orleans Collection, and the Monroe Fellowship from Tulane's New Orleans Center for the Gulf South. In 2016, the French government named Campanella as Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques (Knight in the Order of Academic Palms).

For more information regarding this presentation, contact Chris Smith, Manager of Adult Programming for the library, at (504) 889-8143 or wcsmith@jefferson.lib.la.us.

Louisiana Book News is written by journalist Chere Dastugue Coen, who writes Louisiana romances and paranormal mysteries under the pen name of Cherie Claire. The first books in her award-winning series are FREE as ebooks! For more information and to sign up for her newsletter visit www.cherieclaire.net.

Tuesday ebook spotlight: 'The 12 Slays of Christmas'

Here’s a great opportunity to enjoy 12 mysteries and help our four-legged friends at the same time.

Colleen Mooney of New Orleans is one of 12 cozy mystery authors taking part in the Christmas anthology “The 12 Slays of Christmas.” This enormous collection is only 99 cents as a pre-order (the release date is Dec. 4 and then it will be $4.99) and all of the book’s proceeds will benefit animal rescue groups.

And there’s more! (I sound like a TV salesman, don’t I?) There will also be a recipe book, “The 12 Slays of Christmas Recipe Book” paperback that will sell for $12 on Amazon.

“I met Abby Vandiver in a Twitter group and the next thing I know I’m working with these wonderful mystery writers and we are doing a Christmas Box set called the ‘12 Slays of Christmas’ book and donating all proceeds to non-kill animals shelters,” Mooney wrote me by email. “Now, since Hurricane Harvey hit Houston and Irma hit Florida, there is a greater need than ever. We hope to sell enough copies so that we can help both areas.”

The lineup of authors and stories:

Abby L. Vandiver, “Baby Its Cold Outside”

Judith Lucci, “The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year”

Amy Vansant, “Stollen Time”

Colleen Mooney, “Death by Rum Balls”

Amy Reade, “The Worst Noel”

Nell Goddin, “The Case of the Curious Biscuit”

Colleen Helme, “Devil in A Black Suit”

Larissa Reinhart, “May Your Days Be Cherry and Albright”

Kim Hunt Harris, “Frankincense, Gold, and Murder”

Cindy Bell, “Christmas Chocolates and Crimes”

Summer Prescott, “Home for the Holidays”

Kathleen Dionne, “Murder at the Holiday Bazaar”

WEBSITE:  www.12slaysofChristmas.com

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075FGNTG4/

Nook: http://bit.ly/BN12Slays
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?Query=12+slays

Louisiana Book News is written by journalist Chere Dastugue Coen, who writes Louisiana romances and paranormal mysteries under the pen name of Cherie Claire. The first books in her award-winning series are FREE as ebooks! For more information and to sign up for her newsletter visit www.cherieclaire.net.

Wiley wins again with 'The Last Ballad'

Ella May Wiggins was the stuff of legends — married young, raised children on her own when her husband ran off and worked the cotton mills of North Carolina earning only enough wages to live in poverty among African American mill workers. Tired of the life bestowed upon her without the possibility to rise above, she joined the union movement, gaining popularity for her ballads of equality. She worked 12-hour days and fought to have the union admit African Americans as well as white. Her best-known ballad, “A Mill Mother’s Lament,” was recorded by Pete Seeger and others.

Wiley Cash, who received his Ph.D. from UL-Lafayette, brings this remarkable but unassuming woman to light in his latest novel sure to win acclaim, “The Last Ballad.” He follows Ella May through her travails, the horrific work conditions in American Mill No. 2 of Bessemer City and the racial disparity existing within the South in 1929. We also peek into the lives of her African American friends, the union leaders, a shopkeeper who bought whiskey from her no-good husband and members of mill society, including mill owners with better working conditions than Ella’s own.

Some of the characters we assume are real figures in history, brushed uniquely with the author’s pen. Others, complete fabrications. And the story itself is a fictionalized account of Ella May’s desire for a better world for herself and her children, the rise and fall of the union movement in this segment of North Carolina and Ella May’s ultimate murder that occurs a few months later. (Her murder is not a spoiler; you learn this early on.)

Like his previous award-winning and best-selling novels — “A Land More Kind Than Home” is one of my all-time favorites, a stunning piece of literature — “The Last Ballad” resonates with pain, love, the struggle of life and the gross injustices of the world. I hated leaving Ella May’s world, reveled in watching her bravery against unspeakable odds and her unending support of racial equality. Along the way, Cash provided a riveting story in the details surrounding her life.

I can’t commend Cash enough, nor stop recommending his novels. He’s a unique Southern voice breathing fresh life into a long-standing literary tradition. As Ben Foundation, author of “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” wrote: “I can think of no more relevant novel for our times than ‘The Last Ballad.’” I’d add, I can’t think of no more relevant novelist for our times.

Rosemary Wells

Children’s book author Rosemary Wells will discuss “Booking Up Our Kids” at 7 p.m. Thursday, with an autograph session and reception to follow, as part of the library’s 40th Annual Author-Illustrator Program. She will also speak at a workshop geared towards teachers, writers, parents and librarians from 8 a.m. to noon Friday for $25 adults and $10 students. Both events will be held at the East Baton Rouge Parish Main Library. Wells is an author and illustrator of hundreds of children’s books who has won critical acclaim for her life’s work with awards from the International Reading Association’s Children’s Choices, the National Council of Teachers of English/Children’s Literature Assembly, the Mystery Writers of America, The New York Public Library, the American Library Association, the Children’s Book Council and many more. For information, visit www.ebrpl.com.

Coffee reads

Six books from Louisiana authors will be featured during the 2017 season of Coffee and Conversation, a literary initiative sponsored by the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival and the Jefferson Parish Library. First up is Peter Dedek, discussing “The Cemeteries of New Orleans,” at 7 p.m. Thursday in the meeting rooms of the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon Ave., Metairie. Books will be available for sale through the Friends of the Library and the event is free and open to the public. Dedek, author of “Historic Preservation for Designers” and “Hip to the Trip: A Cultural History of Route 66,” is an associate professor at Texas State University, where he teaches history of design, historic preservation and architectural history.

Book events 

Louisiana historian Meredith Melancon will retrace the steps of the slave Solomon Northup as he moved from New Orleans to Rapides Parish to Avoyelles Parish from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Ellender Memorial Library at Nicholls in Thibodaux. The talk is part of the library’s traveling exhibit from the Historic New Orleans Collection, “Purchased Lives: The American Slave Trade from 1808 to 1865.”

Military historian Martin K.A. Morgan will discuss rare footage taken with an 8mm movie camera of the attack on Pearl Harbor at 7 p.m. Thursday at the East Bank Regional Library, Metairie. Morgan’s presentation is part of the regularly scheduled meeting of the World War II Discussion Group which has met at the library for more than a decade. This event is free and open to the public. Morgan is the author of “Down to Earth—The 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment in Normandy.”

Local authors will participate in the Books for the Bayou from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at the Terrebonne Parish Library in Houma. For information, visit http://mytpl.org/.

Cheré Coen is the author of several Louisiana non-fiction books and the “Viola Valentine” Louisiana paranormal mystery series under the pen name of Cherie Claire. Write her at cherecoen@gmail.com.

Tuesday ebook spotlight: Leger's 'Settling for More'

Lori Leger’s third book in her Prime of Love series has been released and it’s only 99 cents.

Here’s the book description for “Settling for More:”

The fifty-something-year-old Sandra and Marshall Campion are beginning to enjoy life with no children at home. Trips to Belize...weekends at the beach house with other couples, tailgating and season passes to college football games. Their youngest, Brock, has just graduated from college and has a new fiancée. Their oldest daughter, Ella, is married to an architect and still bears an irrational grudge against her younger sister. Middle daughter, Maddie, dropped out of college at 20 and has been on a six-year trek across the U.S., taking odd jobs to earn her keep. She calls and video chats occasionally to let them know she’s alive, but they haven’t seen her in person for well over four years. 

When she arrives, unannounced, towing a four-year-old daughter they knew nothing about, the Campions are both thrilled and shocked.  Shock turns to pleasant surprise as they accustom themselves to being new grandparents to the bright, articulately advanced child. They hope to convince their daughter to settle down in their hometown, but the older-middle sibling rivalry rears its ugly head and threatens the peace and serenity of the entire family. So much so that the couple awakens one morning to find that Maddie is missing. She’s left behind two things: a note, and her child. Will she resolve her issues and come home to finish raising her daughter, or will Sandra and Marshall Campion have to start their lives over as new parents?  

Leger is an award-winning author and adores writing stories set in southwest Louisiana, where good Cajun cooking, helping your neighbors, and saying ‘y’all’ is as normal as hurricanes, heat, and humidity. She has 12 full-length novels, and five short stories published in four series: La Fleur de Love, its spin-off, Halos and Horn; Seasons of Love, Prime of Love series, and one stand-alone Christmas suspense published with The Wild Rose Press. She’s contributed to the Sweet and Savory Cookbook of Amazon Authors, published by Top Ten Press. Her fourth novel in the Halos and Horns series, “One Year to Forever,” won 2015 Romance Novel of Excellence award from InD’tale Review magazine.

Louisiana Book News is written by journalist Chere Dastugue Coen, who writes Louisiana romances and paranormal mysteries under the pen name of Cherie Claire. The first books in her award-winning series are FREE as ebooks! For more information and to sign up for her newsletter visit www.cherieclaire.net.