Ten Great Books set in New Orleans

22nd December 2022

Ten Great books set in New Orleans. New Orleans is a Louisiana city on the Mississippi River, near the Gulf of Mexico. Nicknamed the ‘Big Easy,”

‘It’s known for its round-the-clock nightlife, vibrant live-music scene and spicy, singular cuisine reflecting its history as a melting pot of French, African and American cultures. Embodying its festive spirit is Mardi Gras, the late-winter carnival famed for raucous costumed parades and street parties

‘Pinch the tail and suck the head’ instruction on how to eat crawfish New Orleans style

Here are ten great books set in the city:

Mina and the Undead by Amy McCaw

New Orleans Fang Fest, 1995. Mina’s having a summer to die for.

17-year-old Mina, from England, arrives in New Orleans to visit her estranged sister, Libby. After growing up in the town that inspired Dracula, Mina loves nothing more than a creepy horror movie. She can’t wait to explore the city’s darkest secrets – vampire tours, seedy bars, spooky cemeteries, disturbing local myths…

And it gets even better when Mina lands a part-time job at a horror movie mansion and meets Jared, Libby’s gorgeous housemate, co-worker and fellow horror enthusiast.

But the perfect summer bliss is broken when, while exploring the mansion, Mina stumbles upon the body of a girl with puncture marks on her neck, clutching a lock of hair that suspiciously resembles Libby’s…

Someone is replicating New Orleans’ most brutal supernatural killings. Mina must discover the truth and prove her sister’s innocence before she becomes the victim of another myth.

The unmissable YA Gothic horror of 2021, perfect for fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Stranger Things.

A Free Man of Color by Barbara Hambly

This lush and haunting novel tells of a city steeped in decadent pleasures and of a man, proud and defiant, caught in a web of murder and betrayal.

It is 1833. In the midst of Mardi Gras, Benjamin January, a Creole physician and music teacher, is playing piano at the Salle d’Orleans when the evening’s festivities are interrupted – by murder.

The ravishing Angelique Crozat, a notorious octoroon who travels in the city’s finest company, has been strangled to death. With the authorities reluctant to become involved, Ben begins his own inquiry, which will take him through the seamy haunts of riverboatmen and into the huts of voodoo-worshipping slaves.

But soon the eyes of suspicion turn toward Ben – for, black as the slave who fathered him, this free man of color is still seen as the perfect scapegoat.

The House Uptown by Melissa Ginsburg

Ava, 14 years old and totally on her own, has still not fully processed her mother’s death when she finds herself on a train heading to New Orleans, going to stay with Lane, her grandmother whom she’s never met.

Lane is a well-known artist in the New Orleans art scene. She spends most of her days in a pot-smoke haze, sipping iced coffee, and working on the mural that has been her singular focus for years. Her grip on reality is shaky at best, but her work provides a comfort.

Ava’s arrival unsettles Lane. The girl bears an uncanny resemblance to her daughter, whom she was estranged from before her death. Now her presence is dredging up painful and disturbing memories, which forces Lane to retreat even further into her own mind.

Ava, meanwhile, is entranced and frightened by her grandmother. She wants to be included in her eccentric life, but can’t quite navigate Lane’s tempestuous moods.

Attempting to keep the peace is Oliver, Lane’s assistant and confidant. As this unlikely trio attempts to find their way and form a bond, the oppressive heat and history of New Orleans bears down on them, forcing them to a reckoning none of them is ready for.

The Axeman’s Jazz by Ray Celestin

New Orleans, 1919. As a dark serial killer – The Axeman – stalks the city, three individuals set out to unmask him . . .

Though every citizen of the ‘Big Easy’ thinks they know who could be behind the terrifying murders, Detective Lieutenant Michael Talbot, heading up the official investigation, is struggling to find leads. But Michael has a grave secret, and if he doesn’t get himself on the right track fast, it could be exposed . . .

Former detective Luca d’Andrea has spent the last six years in Angola state penitentiary, after Michael, his protégée, blew the whistle on his corrupt behaviour. Now a newly freed man, Luca is back working with the mafia, whose need to solve the mystery of the Axeman is every bit as urgent as that of the authorities.

Meanwhile, Ida is a secretary at the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Obsessed with Sherlock Holmes and dreaming of a better life, Ida stumbles across a clue which lures her and her musician friend, Louis Armstrong, to the case – and into terrible danger . . .

As Michael, Luca and Ida each draw closer to discovering the killer’s identity, the Axeman himself will issue a challenge to the people of New Orleans: play jazz or risk becoming the next victim. And as the case builds to its crescendo, the sky will darken and a great storm will loom over the city . . .

Inspired by a true story, THE AXEMAN’S JAZZ, set against the heady backdrop of jazz-filled, mob-ruled New Orleans, is an ambitious, gripping thriller announcing a major new talent in historical crime fiction.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Never published during his lifetime, John Kennedy Toole’s masterful comic novel takes its title, as well asfrom Jonathan Swift A monument to sloth, rant and contempt, a behemoth of fat, flatulence and furious suspicion of anything modern – this is Ignatius J. Reilly of New Orleans, noble crusader against a world of dunces. The ordinary folk of New Orleans seem to think he is unhinged. Ignatius ignores them, heaving his vast bulk through the city’s fleshpots in a noble crusade against vice, modernity and ignorance. But his momma has a nasty surprise in store for him: Ignatius must get a job. Undaunted, he uses his new-found employment to further his mission – and now he has a pirate costume and a hot-dog cart to do it with…

Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje

Based on the life of cornet player Buddy Bolden, one of the legendary jazz pioneers of turn-of-the-twentieth-century New Orleans, Coming Through Slaughter is an extraordinary recreation of a remarkable musical life and a tragic conclusion. Through a collage of memoirs, interviews, imaginary conversations and monologues, Ondaatje builds a picture of a man who would work by day at a barber shop and by night unleash his talent to wild audiences who had never experienced such playing. But Buddy was also playing the field with two women, and inside his head was a ticking time-bomb which he was unable to stop.

Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice

In a darkened room a young man sits telling the macabre and eerie story of his life – the story of a vampire, gifted with eternal life, cursed with an exquisite craving for human blood. Anne Rice’s compulsively readable novel is arguably the most celebrated work of vampire fiction since Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published in 1897. As the Washington Post said on its first publication, it is a ‘thrilling, strikingly original work of the imagination . . . sometimes horrible, sometimes beautiful, always unforgettable’.

New Orleans Noir by Julie Smith

New Orleans Noir explores the dark corners of our city in eighteen stories, set both pre- and post-Katrina…In Julie Smith, Temple found a perfect editor for the New Orleans volume, for she is one who knows and loves the city and its writers and knows how to bring out the best in both…It’s harrowing reading, to be sure, but it’s pure page-turning pleasure, too.
—Times-Picayune

New Orleans Noir is a vivid series of impressions of the city in moments that brought out either the best or worst in people. As part of the first wave of fiction to arrive in the wake of the storm, it’s a thrilling read and a harbinger of what should be an interesting stream of works.
—Gambit Weekly

Don’t expect the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce to put its seal of approval on New Orleans Noir, because these eighteen stories describe a city where serial killers and philosophers live side by side…Yet when you’ve waded through these anguished pages, you can begin to understand why–as corrupt as it is, as broken as it is–so many of New Orleans’s refugees still long to go home.
—Mystery Scene

The excellent twelfth entry in Akashic’s city-specific noir series illustrates the diversity of the chosen locale…Appropriately, Smith divides the book into pre- and post- Katrina sections, and many of the more powerful tales describe the disaster’s hellish aftermath.
—Publishers Weekly

Roll ’em Mister Bones by Mark Stewart-Jones

Martin Bonehouse sits in his hotel room in New Orleans writing a book about the city. This book will be a welcome departure from his shocking fiction debut, the far-reaching consequences of which have had a hand in his exile and estrangement from his family in England. In fact, the controversy of the misunderstood subject matter has all but destroyed his life.

However, his writing focus is soon hijacked by the legend of Tambo Bones – a 1940s blackface minstrel whom Martin is convinced has produced one of the greatest lost protest songs of the twentieth century. From the first time Martin hears the song he becomes obsessed with dragging Tambo’s reputation out of the murky racist pit befitting a minstrel performer and elevating him to his rightful status as a civil rights pioneer. But how important is the truth when the stories are so entertaining and history is merely a display of the most convenient facts?

The Lost German Slave Girl by John Bailey

It is a spring morning in New Orleans, 1843. In the Spanish Quarter, on a street lined with flophouses and gambling dens, Madame Carl recognizes a face from her past. It is the face of a German girl, Sally Miller, who disappeared twenty-five years earlier. But the young woman is property, the slave of a nearby cabaret owner. She has no memory of a “white” past. Yet her resemblance to her mother is striking, and she bears two telltale birthmarks. In brilliant novelistic detail, award-winning historian John Bailey reconstructs the exotic sights, sounds, and smells of mid-nineteenth-century New Orleans, as well as the incredible twists and turns of Sally Miller’s celebrated and sensational case. Did Miller, as her relatives sought to prove, arrive from Germany under perilous circumstances as an indentured servant or was she, as her master claimed, part African, and a slave for life? A tour de force of investigative history that reads like a suspense novel, The Lost German Slave Girl is a fascinating exploration of slavery and its laws, a brilliant reconstruction of mid-nineteenth-century New Orleans, and a riveting courtroom drama. It is also an unforgettable portrait of a young woman in pursuit of freedom.

Enjoy your literary adventures in New Orleans! If we have missed any of your favourites, please add them in Comments below,

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