When the beautiful centuries-old vampire Jillianna Romanetti first lays eyes on Detective Jack Olivier’, she sees more than just his rugged good looks: She sees the face of Karleto, her gypsy lover, the man who, many years ago, turned her innocent young body into that of a woman. Now that Jillianna has, once more, found the man whose very touch never failed to leave her body weak and hungry for more, she is determined to make him her own. Unaware that in a past life his soul once lived in the body of Jillianna’s gypsy lover, Jack Olivier’ is already deeply in love and happily married to another. Jillianna Romanetti is not about to let a mere mortal stand between her and the man she loves.
Jonathan Hindel has a dark secret. Although his beautiful Angelia has been dead for centuries, his love for her has never died. With the help of a voodoo priestess, young girls in the bayous are brought forth to house Angelia's spirit, thus allowing Jonathan to still take to his bed the woman he loves. Jonathan Hindel has another dark secret. Will the town be able to survive it?
On Friday the thirteenth of October, a five-year-old girl named James meets a monster at the Shreveport Holiday Inn. Now, there are those in southern Louisiana who believe in the legend of the rougarou—a werewolf that prowls the bayou. Others think the monster is nothing more than a Cajun tall tale. The Gauthier family, though, knows true evil exists. Matthew Gauthier, his wife, and their four kids are a family built on love and pride, but their shared happiness is shattered that terrible Friday in October after attending the Louisiana State Fair. They move on in the aftermath, even James, who grows into a great beauty is always fearful of what hides in the night. It is James’s loveliness that initially attracts rural Texas boy Charles “Cat” Thomas when they meet years later. It is her fragile nature—reminding him of his own tragic family history—that makes Cat want to protect this shy, secretive, young woman. Loving James comes at a terrible price, though, because the rougarou is still out there watching.
When an eviscerated body is discovered in the swamp, the residents of Morgan City - including the Mayor - blame the Rougarou. A swamp creature similar to Yeti or Bigfoot, the Rougarou is also known as the Werewolf of Louisiana, and Hawk - who's patrolled the basin all his life - has never seen one. With the eyes of the whole nation on the case, Hawk and Kristi must work through the political haze and find the killer. It seems like everyone has lost their common sense. But is the killer a creature of myth, or a man with evil intent?
Three thrilling mysteries in one collection. Psychic LaShaun Rousselle and Deputy Chase Broussard hunt killers in the swamps of Vermilion Parish, Louisiana. In A Darker Shade of Midnight, LaShaun must stop an evil from the supernatural world and prove she's not a murderer. In Between Dusk and Dawn, LaShaun and Chase must stop a serial killer who may or may not be all human. In Only By Moonlight, LaShaun fights a cult and has to save Chase when he's controlled by an evil force.
In Folklore Figures of French and Creole Louisiana, Nathan J. Rabalais examines the impact of Louisiana’s remarkably diverse cultural and ethnic groups on folklore characters and motifs during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Establishing connections between Louisiana and France, West Africa, Canada, and the Antilles, Rabalais explores how folk characters, motifs, and morals adapted to their new contexts in Louisiana. By viewing the state’s folklore in the light of its immigration history, he demonstrates how folktales can serve as indicators of sociocultural adaptation as well as contact among cultural communities. In particular, he examines the ways in which collective traumas experienced by Louisiana’s major ethnic groups—slavery, the grand dérangement, linguistic discrimination—resulted in fundamental changes in these folktales in relation to their European and African counterparts. Rabalais points to the development of an altered moral economy in Cajun and Creole folktales. Conventional heroic qualities, such as physical strength, are subverted in Louisiana folklore in favor of wit and cunning. Analyses of Black Creole animal tales like those of Bouki et Lapin and Tortie demonstrate the trickster hero’s ability to overcome both literal and symbolic entrapment through cleverness. Some elements of Louisiana’s folklore tradition, such as the rougarou and cauchemar, remain an integral presence in the state’s cultural landscape, apparent in humor, popular culture, regional branding, and children’s books. Through its adaptive use of folklore, French and Creole Louisiana will continue to retell old stories in innovative ways as well as create new stories for future generations.
The Dictionary of Louisiana French (DLF) provides the richest inventory of French vocabulary in Louisiana and reflects precisely the speech of the period from 1930 to the present. This dictionary describes the current usage of French-speaking peoples in the five broad regions of South Louisiana: the coastal marshes, the banks of the Mississippi River, the central area, the north, and the western prairie. Data were collected during interviews from at least five persons in each of twenty-four areas in these regions. In addition to the data collected from fieldwork, the dictionary contains material compiled from existing lexical inventories, from texts published after 1930, and from archival recordings. The new authoritative resource, the DLF not only contains the largest number of words and expressions but also provides the most complete information available for each entry. Entries include the word in the conventional French spelling, the pronunciation (including attested variants), the part of speech classification, the English equivalent, and the word's use in common phrases. The DLF features a wealth of illustrative examples derived from fieldwork and textual sources and identification of the parish where the entry was collected or the source from which it was compiled. An English-to-Louisiana French index enables readers to find out how particular notions would be expressed in la Louisiane .
A New York Times bestseller! Only from Heather Graham—spine-tingling suspense laced with the otherworldly as the FBI’s Krewe of Hunters tracks a killer who seems to be a dark legend come to life. With the execution of a serial killer known as the Artiste, Cheyenne Donegal thinks a grim part of her past is finally put to rest. Her cousin had been the twisted killer’s final victim, and then-teenage Cheyenne was integral in bringing him to justice. That tragedy drove her to become an FBI agent. And now she’s back in Louisiana because someone is murdering young women in the same manner as the Artiste. Krewe of Hunters agent Andre Broussard has deep ties in New Orleans and Cajun country beyond. He knows that more than one monster has stalked the bayou. Has a deadly threat been resurrected, or does someone have a dark inspiration? With the life of a missing woman on the line, Cheyenne and Andre have to set aside their doubts about each other and work to discover the truth. The case is too close and too personal—but they can’t let it go, especially now that a ruthless killer has turned the tables and is hunting them.
A magical terrorist is on the loose. Murder strikes an airship party. A lumberjack, thought dead and cremated, kills and eats a lawyer during a national court case. In the city of Grousecap, a ritualistic serial killer has stalked the streets for sixty years. Inspector Archibald Marshall returns to solve these cases and more. Yet the land of Astryss becomes more dangerous each month. Marshall faces a growing number of magical threats, enduring close victories and bitter losses. And several of his problems trace back to a haunting surrounding three refugees from centuries prior.
