Bayou Book Thief

A new mystery series from USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award-winning author Ellen Byron. Twenty-eight-year-old Ricki James leaves Los Angeles to start a new life in New Orleans after her showboating actor husband perishes doing a stupid YouTube stunt. The Big Easy is where she was born and adopted by the NICU nurse who cared for her after Ricki's teen mother disappeared from the hospital. Ricki's career dream comes true when she joins the quirky staff running the spectacular Garden District home of bon vivant Genevieve "Vee" Charbonnet, one of the city's most legendary restauranteurs. The mansion, built in 1867, has recently been opened to the public as an historical site. Ricki gets to turn her avocation - collecting vintage cookbooks - into a vocation by launching the house museum's gift shop, Miss Vee's Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware, where she'll sell the cookbooks along with unique kitchenware, much of it also vintage or antique. In her free time, she'll hunt for the birth parents she never knew. When murder bedevils the site, Ricki will also find herself in the unexpected role of amateur sleuth, putting to use the observational skills she's developed ferreting out hidden treasures. Will Miss Vee's Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware be a success… or given some of the Crescent City's nefarious denizens, a recipe for disaster? Series Overview: Rickie James stumbles into murder while selling vintage cookbooks and antique kitchen related swag in a gift shop housed in a spectacular historical mansion in the Garden District of New Orleans .