Bayou Bytes Blog

There are times in our lives where the latest Pulitzer Prize winner is staring at you, the New York Times bestseller in nonfiction is whispering to you, and that awesome 2017 reading challenge that you have yet to start is making you feel guilty... and all you want is a fun, quick read that isn't romance. If this is you right now, never fear, Jenn McKinlay is here. McKinlay is an American author who specializes in cozy mysteries, which are mysteries that are short, fun, filled with quirky characters, usually a quaint town with lots of secrets, and a dead body. McKinlay has five series, three under her name and two under different pen names: Library Lover's Mysteries; Cupcake Bakery Mysteries; London Hat Shop Mysteries; Good Buy Girls Mysteries (writing as Josie Belle); Decoupage Mysteries (writing as Lucy Lawrence.)   Although her pen name series are fun, they were short-lived.  It is the three series under her own name which are McKinlay's draw.  McKinlay uses...

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...

I grew up with an undeniable fascination for the lost Imperial Russian Royal family (and particularly Anastasia, of course). I remember watching Unsolved Mysteries back in 1998 and listening to Robert Stack describe how Anna Anderson's ears matched Anastasia Romanov's ears at 14 different points. Well then, mystery solved, I thought. Of course that's Anastasia. I was about ten. I didn't need much convincing. The later discovery of the Romanov remains quashed any wishful thinking; the entire Romanov family had indeed died back in 1918 via firing squad in Ekaterinburg, Russia. Like Marie Antoinette, the Romanovs have endured in the collective public consciousness as tragic victims of a violent political upheaval. We see that beautiful young family in photographs and shake our heads. We mourn the loss of a royal dynasty.  Helen Rappaport re-establishes the Romanovs as people in The Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg. Her sharp focus on thei...

What's there NOT to like in murder, intrigue, post-war British grandeur, and a bit of romance?  This is what you get with Amory and Milo Ames. Picture Downton Abbey meets Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence series and you get the Amory Ames mystery series.  Written by Louisiana librarian, Ashley Weaver, the Amory Ames series follows Amory, a young British socialite who is navigating the turbulent waters of British high society, her tumultuous marriage, and the occasional murder thrown in. Weaver, a librarian from Allen Parish, Louisiana, sets her mysteries in the boisterous, extravagant background of post-WWI England, where parties, high society, and a devil-may-care attitude reign supreme in the lives of the Ameses and their social circles.  Despite being a 21st century American, Weaver does an excellent job in recreating what English high society was and how it could be fraught with secrets, intrigue, and back-stabbing, not to mention shallowness, vanity, and superfici...

Courtesy of  http://www.berries.com/blog/20-desserts-inspired-by-your-favorite-books Thanks to the lovely readers at Shari's Berries, I present to you the ultimate awesome list: books and accompanying dessert ideas!  Try out a dessert and bite into a good book! This was provided by the awesome people over at Shari's Berries. I appreciate their reaching out to Bayou Bytes!

Today, America lost one of the greatest authors it has ever produced and certainly the most famous and influential author from the Deep South.   Harper Lee (1926-2016)   influenced millions and opened the country's eyes to the abhorrent racism that was still alive and strong in the South with her 1960 To Kill a Mockingbird . The book, which follows the Finch family as they struggle with racism, growing up, hope, and tragedy in their small town, Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression, became a quintessential part of American literature and became a staple work of Southern Gothic literature.  Lee received acclaim, fame, and criticism from around the world as people fell in love with the characters and the message of compassion and equality; on the opposite hand, Southerners responded with anger and staunch defense of their Jim Crow system.  Lee created one of the most memorable and beloved American protagonists, Atticus Finch, an older father and attorney wh...

Wizard-For-Hire, Harry Dresden. Courtesy of comicvine.com Harry Dresden usually gets into deep trouble.  Whether it's with trolls, vampires (of four different courts, but all of the same opinion that he needs to die), fairies, thugs, wizards, women, or his know-it-all talking spirit skull, wizard-for-hire has a knack for getting in way too deep with people (or things) that can kill him.  And, hells bells, he would not change it for anything.  The leather duster wearing and gun toting Dresden is sarcastic, handsome, intelligent, and talented, with a white and black sense of good and bad, a strict moral code, and a devil-may-care attitude which helps and hinders him.  Oh, and he mainly uses spells, a blasting rod, totems for protection, and fights Chicago's, the city he loves, underworld monsters, supernatural and human.  The wizard is the creation of American author, Jim Butcher, and debuted in 2000's Storm Front .  Fourteen more books later, Harry's in...