Bayou Bytes Blog

Recently, I have embarked on a new, rather morbid fascination with nonfiction featuring shipwrecks and the stranded crew's quests for survival.  This is a departure from my usual crime spree nonfiction and my love for political nonfiction.  Shipwreck: the very word conjures up images of carnage, desperation, survival, unkempt beards, cannibalism, and the ultimate battle between the forces of nature and man.  As a society, we have romanticized the idea of a shipwreck, of the castaways stranded, and of the epic battle to get home.  There is absolutely nothing romantic about  Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing   and In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick .  These are stories of horrible circumstances, lives in peril, the brutality of nature, the despair and hopelessness that come with the dawning realization that they are probably not going to survive.  Nevertheless... I hate to a...

When a book starts out with "The problem with my life was that it was someone else's idea," you know you're in for a rough ride.  The heartbreaking and beautiful  Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe  is rough, soft, draining, and uplifting in a way that is hoped for but unexpected.  Published in 2012 by American poet and author, Benjamin Alire Sáenz ,  Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe  is a novel marketed to the young adult audience and explores a several year friendship between two Mexican-American young men, Aristotle (Ari) and Dante, who could not be anymore different.  However, they are strangely drawn to one another and become fast friends.   Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe  is more than just a story about friends though; it is about discovering the secrets of the universe, which, in the end, is discovering who you truly are. Ari is a quiet, unsure teen, who is st...

 As a librarian, people suggest books to me almost constantly.  Most suggestions are well-intended, but I usually do not heed them; I have very particular tastes in books and most of the suggestions do not make the cut.  However, when a coworker suggested The Rook by Daniel O'Malley, I considered and then put it on hold. Oh. My. Gosh.  What a book.  A 2012 debut (a DEBUT!!!!) novel from O'Malley, an Australian author, The Rook  begins with a woman in a park, at dark, surrounded by dead people wearing latex gloves, and no memory.  Long story short, Myfanwy Thomas is a member of the Checquy, a secret government organization dedicated to fighting the supernatural.  The Checquy, as Thomas discovers, is a hierarchical government agency that deals not only with supernatural events, but also with the everyday humdrum boring monotony of government work.  That is all I am going to give away about the plot.  This is the type of book that needs...

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...