Sweet as Cane, Salty as Tears
Sweet as Cane, Salty as Tears

Author: Ken Wheaton

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2014-07-01

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 1497638615

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A freak accident forces a New Yorker to return to Louisiana and confront her Cajun past There is nothing more dangerous than a spooked rhinoceros. It is just before lunchtime when Huey, the prized black rhino of Broussard, Louisiana, erupts from his enclosure, trampling a zoo employee on his way to a rampage in the Cajun countryside. The incident makes the rounds online as News of the Weird, and Katherine Fontenot is laughing along with the rest of her New York office when she notices the name of the hurt zookeeper: Karen-Anne Castille—her sister. Fifty years old, lonely, and in danger of being laid off, Katherine has spent decades trying to ignore her Louisiana roots. Forced home by Karen-Anne’s accident, she remembers everything about the bayou that she wanted to escape: the heat, the mosquitoes, and the constant, crushing embrace of family. But when forced to confront the ghosts of her past, she discovers that escape might never have been necessary.

Sweet As Cane, Salty As Tears
Sweet As Cane, Salty As Tears

Author: Ken Wheaton

Publisher:

Published: 2014-07

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781624672460

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Fifty-year old Katherine Lafleur is woken from sleep one wintry morning in Brooklyn, New York, by a phone call telling her that her younger sister Karen-Anne has died after being trampled by a run-away rhinoceros. So after years of avoiding her home state of Louisiana, Katherine finds herself journeying back to a place where she's only known as Katie-Lee and she's constantly at odds with her older sister Kendra-Sue. The physical distance may only be 1,500 miles, but the emotional and psychic distances is light years away from her life in New York, where she communicates more with text and social media than through actual conversation. In Louisiana, however, she finds a hurricane of family members. Sisters and brother, their kids and kids' kids. Not to mention the distant relations that threaten to turn the funeral services into a circus of epic hilarity rather than a somber affair. Tensions slowly build throughout the comedy, but only when Katie-Lee spots her high school sweetheart lurking around the outskirts of the graveyard do we finally learn what drove her away from home all those years ago--and just how tight the Lafleur family bond really is.

Voices from Louisiana
Voices from Louisiana

Author: Ann Brewster Dobie

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2018-03-21

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 0807168939

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Voices from Louisiana provides thoughtful, timely profiles of some of the state’s most highly regarded and popular contemporary authors. Readers interested in Louisiana’s rich literary tradition will appreciate these evocative essays on writers whose works emanate from the cultures and landscapes of the Gulf South. Ann Brewster Dobie explores the works of eleven well-known authors and concludes with a look at several emerging talents. These writers work in a broad range of genres, from coming-of-age stories and historical narratives that recover the voices of silenced and oppressed peoples, to crime thrillers set in New Iberia and New Orleans, to poetic invocations of the natural world and narratives capturing the realities of working-class lives. Whether native to the state or transplants, these writers produce works that reflect the vibrant culture that defines the intricate literary landscape of the Pelican State. Dobie highlights the careers of Darrell Bourque, James Lee Burke, Ernest Gaines, Tim Gautreaux, Shirley Ann Grau, Greg Guirard, William Joyce, Julie Kane, Tom Piazza, Martha Serpas, and James Wilcox. Newcomers also profiled include Wiley Cash, Ashley Mace Havird, Anne L. Simon, Katy Simpson Smith, Ashley Weaver, Steve Weddle, and Ken Wheaton.

The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival
The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival

Author: Ken Wheaton

Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.

Published: 2012-10-01

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0758291906

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Welcome to Grand Prairie, Louisiana—land of confounding accents, hard-drinking senior citizens, and charming sinners—brought to hilarious life in a bracing, heartfelt debut novel simmering with Cajun spice. . . Father Steve Sibille has come home to the bayou to take charge of St. Pete's church. Among his challenges are teenybopper altar girls, insomnia-curing confessions, and alarmingly alluring congregant Vicky Carrier. Then there's Miss Rita, an irrepressible centenarian with a taste for whiskey, cracklins, and sticking her nose in other people's business. When an outsider threatens to poach Father Steve's flock, Miss Rita suggests he fight back by staging an event that will keep St. Pete's parishioners loyal forever. As The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival draws near, help comes from the strangest places. And while the road to the festival may be paved with good intentions—not to mention bake sales, an elephant, and the most bizarre cook-out ever—where it will lead is anyone's guess. . . "A sparkling debut." --Luis Alberto Urrea, author of Queen of America "Delightful. . ..Wheaton writes with an infectious energy, and his affection for the characters and culture is authentic." --Publishers Weekly

Bacon and Egg Man
Bacon and Egg Man

Author: Ken Wheaton

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2014-07-01

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1497639085

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the halls of Congress, on the streets, in the media, the war on fast food is on. Tofu may be topical, but bacon is eternal. Bacon and Egg Man, Ken Wheaton’s second novel, is a sly send-up of a politically correct food establishment, where the Northeast has split off from the rest of the United States. The new Federation is ruled by the electoral descendants of King Mike, a man who made it his mission to form a country based on good, clean living. But you can’t keep good food down. And Wes Montgomery, a journalist at the last print paper in the Federation, is a mild-mannered bacon-and-egg dealer on the side. Until he gets pinched and finds himself thrust into Chief Detective Blunt’s wild-eyed plot to bring down the biggest illegal food supplier in the land. To make matters worse, Wes is partnered with Detective Hillary Halstead, the cop who, while undercover, became his girlfriend. Their journey takes them from submarine lairs to sushi speakeasies, from Montauk to Manhattan, where they have to negotiate with media magnate the Gawker before a climactic rendezvous with the secretive man who supplies the Northeast with its high-cholesterol contraband, the most eternal of all breakfast foods: bacon and eggs.

Shoveling Smoke
Shoveling Smoke

Author: Austin Davis

Publisher: Chronicle Books

Published: 2006-06

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9780811849579

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Tired of the corporate hassle, burnt-out attorney Clay Parker abondons Houston to set up practice with a small firm in an East Texas town, only to find himself caught up in the middle of a fraud case and defending the nasty Bevo Rasmussen.

This is how You Lose Her
This is how You Lose Her

Author: Junot Díaz

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1594632855

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Presents a collection of stories that explores the heartbreak and radiance of love as it is shaped by passion, betrayal, and the echoes of intimacy.

Duck Duck Gator
Duck Duck Gator

Author: Ken Wheaton

Publisher:

Published: 2020-10-20

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9781735511801

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Reality is stranger than reality TV. When Tony Battaglia wakes up after his successful heart transplant, he's expecting a new lease on life. Even after a decade of stitching together the most ridiculous footage on the most outrageous reality shows, the reality-TV editor could never have expected that his new heart was formerly owned by "Gator Guys" star Lonnie Lalonde Junior. The development puts Tony on the wrong side of the camera, involved in the plot of the show-and with a murder mystery. The official story was that Lonnie Junior slipped and fell. But after heading south and arriving in Blackwater, Cajun Country, Tony discovers that things aren't as simple as they seem-especially after he finds a bit of cast-off footage showing someone else at the scene of the accident. Convinced that Lonnie Junior has been murdered, area weirdo, AirBnB host and "Gator Guys" cast member Fudgeround Arcenaux convinces Tony to help him investigate the case. As Tony gets more and more involved with Lonnie's family and Lonnie's ex-girlfriend (and former child star) Chelsea Granger, all signs start to point to infamous rage-aholic Travis Richardson, who just happens to be a cast member of the nation's most popular Louisiana-set reality show, "Mallard Men." After Travis is named the prime suspect, he disappears into the swamp, looking guiltier by the minute. And the town of Blackwater becomes home to a media feeding frenzy and a possible family feud between the Richardsons of "Mallard Men" and the cast of "Gator Guys." Behind the scenes, a powerful Southern politician, Senator Ronald Birch, and scheming reality-show producer Barry Steves are pulling the strings. And reality wanna-be Brit Borders just might be involved somehow. But Fudgeround becomes convinced he and Tony just might be looking in the wrong direction-especially after a mob heads out into the swamp to hunt down Travis Richardson and Brit ends up dead. Knowing only that there are bigger forces at play, they set out to find the real culprit before shooting the next season-and the next victim-starts.

Sweet Waters
Sweet Waters

Author: Julie Carobini

Publisher: B&H Publishing Group

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 080544873X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A young woman hopes moving back to the California coast her family left for the Midwest many years ago will lead to a fairytale, but a soap opera is waiting there instead.