{"id":10138,"date":"2022-12-05T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-05T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10138"},"modified":"2022-12-04T16:34:37","modified_gmt":"2022-12-04T21:34:37","slug":"big-easy-big-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10138","title":{"rendered":"Big Easy, Big Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The familiar traveler\u2019s dilemma\u2014what books to pack?\u2014was easily solved for a recent trip to New Orleans. I had already set aside two ideal reads: my friend Tracie Provost\u2019s New Orleans-based Under the Harvest Moon<\/a><\/em> (book two in her under the moon series) and a collection of short stories about the Crescent City<\/a> published by Akashic.<\/em> As it turned out, both were entertaining late-evening companions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the Harvest Moon<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tracie Provost\u2019s books are packed with paranormal events, with vampires and werewolves and mages. Not at all the kind of book I usually read, so kind of thrilling as a result. Provost is so skilled at creating a consistent world for her unusual characters, with their unusual talents, that I\u2019m never caught up short, thinking \u201cWait a minute . . .\u201d Her heroine is Juliette de Grammont, a healer and a magic-using vampire, who had been staked for centuries and only recently revived. Still a young beautiful woman, Juliette\u2019s occasionally dated ideas and struggles with technology amuse her millennial assistant, Jaime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the story begins, a New Orleans police detective who understands Juliette\u2019s special powers calls her in to analyze a crime scene where a vampire and his girlfriend are both dead in a ritual killing. What has taken place, who is doing it, and why become more mysterious and more important as the number of killings increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s intrigue among the various covens in the city. Juliette\u2019s coven has been reduced to her and Jaime, as its other members recently staged an unsuccessful coup against the City\u2019s Grandmaster. A few from her coven were killed, but most are still out there . . . somewhere . . . As the risks mount and the evil motivation behind the killings gradually emerges, Juliette and her lover Josh must look for help from unusual sources\u2014including the pack of werewolves living outside the city\u2014for protection and help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Provost makes the interactions among the characters quite real, almost ordinary\u2014well, almost. She makes them eminently practical. For example, there\u2019s someone they can call who comes with an after-crime clean-up team (he used to work for Al Capone) in order to hide various crimes. In fact, there\u2019s a whole group of mages whose job it is to keep the paranormal world secret\u2014the Gatekeepers. Even select members of the NOPD are in on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you finish Under the Harvest Moon<\/a><\/em>, you can be sure there\u2019s a Book 3 on the way, and will await it eagerly! (You may want to use one of my affiliate links to find it on Amazon, as several books have this title.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Orleans Noir: The Classics<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This collection, edited by Julie Smith, is a bit different than the usual Akashic collection, in that the 18 stories are not all contemporary. In fact, the earliest is from 1843. They include entries from revered authors like O.Henry, Eudora Welty, and Tennessee Williams, as well as modern masters like James Lee Burke and Ace Atkins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, they provide a rich portrait of the city, its contrasts and its corruptions, its amusements and its shenanigans, as seen through these different eyes, with their very different, if precise ways of seeing. Quite a nice collection<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The familiar traveler\u2019s dilemma\u2014what books to pack?\u2014was easily solved for a recent trip to New Orleans. I had already set aside two ideal reads: my friend Tracie Provost\u2019s New Orleans-based Under the Harvest Moon (book two in her under the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"An unusual fictional trip to the underside of New Orleans that only that vampires see and a collection of classic Crescent City noir. Good reading!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1288,1160,3,126,120,66,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-horror","category-mystery","category-reading-2","category-short-story","category-suspense","category-thriller"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2Dw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10140,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10138\/revisions\/10140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}