Ellen Byron’s latest culinary cozy series is just as delightful as her other books but draws more closely on her real-life experiences as a former television screenwriter. Her new heroine, Dee Stern, shares a similar occupation but has decided that she’s had enough of Hollywood. Instead of writing for mediocre sitcoms, she’s going in a…
Whether she’s writing under her own name or under the nom de plume Maria diRico, I love Ellen Byron’s culinary cozies. With her latest mystery series, she takes us back to her beloved Louisiana with our heroine, the New Orleans-born but Los Angeles-raised Miracle “Ricki” Jones-Diaz. Ricki was abandoned shortly after birth but was swiftly…
For decades, patrons of the New Orleans landmark restaurant Commander’s Palace were greeted by the beaming smile of proprietor Ella Brennan. Prompted by her leadership, the quaint Victorian eatery perched on a picturesque corner of the Garden District across the street from a centuries-old cemetery became an award-winning purveyor of Creole haute cuisine. Ella was…
Time to check out the beginning of a delightful culinary cozy mystery series by one of my favorite authors! I came to this series a bit later in its run and am so thrilled to get a chance to go back to its very start here for this column. Thirty-something artist Maggie Crozat has returned…
I knew that I was in for a treat when award-winning author Ellen Byron debuted a brand new culinary cozy mystery series under the pen name Maria DiRico. I was so pleased when Here Comes the Body proceeded to exceed my every expectation—even given how much I already enjoy her Cajun Country Mystery novels! This…
Maggie Crozat is pretty jazzed at her beloved grandmère’s idea for encouraging tourism during the slow season of their small Louisiana town. Hoping to take advantage of business on its way to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Charlotte Crozat proposes that Pelican should hold its own music festival on the Sunday to Thursday…
The fourth installment of the Cajun Country Mystery series finds the small Louisiana town of Pelican recovering from floods that washed away far too many of their residents’ worldly goods. While some are forced to relocate – hopefully temporarily – the Crozat family has been fortunate in having ancestors who built their home high enough…
It’s uncommon for a cozy mystery series to sweep me away so completely that I want to visit its setting, especially if it isn’t located in an urban area (as I’m very much a city girl at heart). But the Cajun Country mysteries are so evocative in both their setting’s traditions and food that I’m…
Malice Domestic—an annual convention held in Washington, D.C., honoring the best of the traditional/cozy mystery genre—has announced the nominees for 2018's Agatha Awards. Loosely defined as “mysteries which contain no explicit sex or excessive gore or violence,” the Agatha Award salutes the books best typified by the works of Agatha Christie. This year, the annual…
Body on the Bayou by Ellen Byron is the 2nd book in the Cajun Country Mystery series, nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Novel. Ellen Byron takes us to Louisiana for this Cajun Country mystery. Maggie Crozat’s long and distant relatives used to own the Doucet Plantation. Now, it’s the Crozat Plantation Bed and…
