Bayou Bytes Blog

So Meddelin Chan accidentally killed her blind date. In self-defense, but still. Now, at 3AM, her mother and three aunties crowd around the kitchen table planning how to get rid of the body.  They have a solid plan set out. But it will have to wait until after the huge wedding their company is working in the morning. So they set the body to chill in one of the aunt's cake coolers, where it can wait until safely after the ceremony.  But when one of the baker's assistants sends off the wrong cooler, the Chans find their corpse at the wedding venue. They'll have to scramble to keep the body secret and make sure the biggest, most important wedding the Chans have ever taken on is a success.  And it doesn't help that Meddelin's ex-boyfriend, the one that got away, happens to be at the venue. She'd love to reconnect with him, but he really does show up at the worst possible time... This was a delightful read. It was funny, touching, and absolutely a little harrowing wa...

 Evelyn Caldwell has just won an award for her groundbreaking clone research. She would be more excited about it if her husband (Nathan) hadn't stolen that research and cloned her in secret to create Martine. Programmed to be the perfect hostess and soft-spoken wife, Martine is everything Evelyn never was.   But when Nathan winds up dead, Evelyn and Martine must team up to make sure he won't be missed.   This book is a science fiction thriller. If you're looking for fast-paced adventure, this one won't be for you. Told from Evelyn's perspective as she struggles to process her husband's betrayal and her unnerving new partnership with Martine, The Echo Wife is much more of a slow burn. It deals with betrayal and abuse, and it gently touches on ethical questions like the personhood of clones. This is a pretty dark tale, but it's absolutely gripping.  When I first picked up this book, I had no idea what to expect. But the synopsis and cover were creepy enough ...

Leviathan Wakes  is the first book in The Expanse series. It is also the source material for the TV show, The Expanse . A joint effort between Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (who have adopted the pen name James S. A. Corey), The Expanse books currently have eight installations. The ninth and final volume is set to come out within the next year. This is the perfect time to jump on board if you haven't read them yet.  Leviathan Wakes  is set in the near future. Humans have colonized portions of the solar system, with bases on the moon, Mars, and in the Asteroid Belt. But after generations in different environments, physiological and cultural differences have become a prominent source of tension. Martians in their harsh environment are a military-based society, relying on strict order to survive on the rough planet. Belters live entirely on atmosphere-less rocks, valuing teamwork and resource rationing. Both see Earthers as spoiled and selfish people who never have to wonder w...

First novel in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec has a knack, not to mention a reputation, of falling into strange and dangerous murder investigations. He also has a knack and a reputation of solving them. The creation of award-winning Canadian author, Louise Penny, Gamache appeared on the mystery genre scene in 2005 in Still Life, winning Penny numerous awards and kicking off the start to a continuing series, with the 12th and latest book, A Great Reckoning, debuting this year. Based in the culturally tumultuous Quebec, Canada, in a village called Three Pines, Gamache faces down various cunning killers, motivated by greed, ambition, insanity, hate, jealousy, and sometimes, under the surface, racial tensions and stand-offs between the Francophone Quebecois and the Anglophone Quebecois. This last tension plays a running theme throughout Penny's series. True to real life , Penny weaves the ebb and flow of the tension...

Quick! Name a book genre! Did you guess mystery?  If so, then you picked the second most popular genre of fiction books (it just cannot beat that steamy ol' romance genre).  Mysteries range from espionage mysteries to fantasy mysteries to themed mysteries to horror mysteries; the sub genres go on and on. However, in the end, there is no mystery like the classic mystery, with a plucky, eccentric sleuth coming upon a problem (almost always murder) and then proceeding to solve said problem with cunning and little outside help.  This is the tried and true method for writing a mystery and it has endured since the debut of the mystery genre. Courtesy of collinder.com However, no one has quite mastered the art of turning the simplistic formula into a complicated and articulate story like Dame Agatha Christie.  Born in 1890, the English author began her lengthy career during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction" (1920's and 1930's).  However, where many, many ...

Courtesy of goodreads.com Today, Iceland is a prime example of a country absolutely thriving in the modern, changing world.  It is at the top of the game in education, technology, human rights, and regularly tops the stats lists for one of the best and safest places to live in the world.  Yet, 200 years ago, Iceland was a desolate, harsh country, mostly empty space, with a smattering of extremely close-knit, interwoven communities, which feared strangers and change.  This setting, chilly in both the physical landscape and the social one, is where author Hannah Kent sets her novel, Burial Rites .   Burial Rites  focuses on the last person executed in Iceland, Agnes Magnúsdóttir, in 1830.  A brilliant combination of historical fact and fiction, Burial Rites  is a lyrical, somber, yet beautiful novel about love, betrayal, and the ability to overcome first judgments. Agnes Magnúsdóttir and two others are accused of the brutal murder of their emp...