Death Embraced is like no other book you have ever read. Fascinating and entertaining, it leads readers to ponder issues that should not be avoided. Some may want to use it as a guide to visiting New Orleans graveyards . . . or as a guide to life. "An amazing book by an even more amazing writer, historian and educator with vast knowledge of the Crescent City's history and an intimate understanding of many of the Big Easy's lesser-known cultural traditions and customs. A must-read for anyone who is serious about learning the true history of New Orleans. I dare you to try to put it down after reading its first few pages." -Edmund W. Lewis, Editor, The Louisiana Weekly "A gem of a book, full of little things you didn't know you wanted to know. With subtitle wit and serious depth of knowledge, Mary LaCoste shares the down and dirty of one of New Orleans most mysterious institutions." -Liz Scott, New Orleans Magazine

Watery graves, iconic tatoos and ancient bones come together in the novel Floating Souls: The Canal Murders. When the bodies of young women are found floating in New Orleans drainage canals, Maggie Andrepont, local forensic anthropologist, is called in to help find a pattern to the homicides and to profile a perpetrator. Complicating matters, an old flame from graduate school, now Minister of Antiquities in Rome, asks for her immediate assistance to sort out the mystery of ancient bodies found in a famous campanile in Venice, Italy. Juggling work on corpses on two continents challenges Maggie in ways no one could have predicted. Though confident in her professional expertise, Maggie is not as secure in her personal life. A secret history with the parish coroner, an overeager amateur archaeologist, and intrusions by a documentary producer are distracting her from her mission. When it turns out that someone is stalking Maggie, the tension ratchets up -- leading to a startling conclusion to this taut and fascinating sleuthing experience.

Watery graves, iconic tatoos and ancient bones come together in the novel Floating Souls: The Canal Murders. When the bodies of young women are found floating in New Orleans drainage canals, Maggie Andrepont, local forensic anthropologist, is called in to help find a pattern to the homicides and to profile a perpetrator. Complicating matters, an old flame from graduate school, now Minister of Antiquities in Rome, asks for her immediate assistance to sort out the mystery of ancient bodies found in a famous campanile in Venice, Italy. Juggling work on corpses on two continents challenges Maggie in ways no one could have predicted. Though confident in her professional expertise, Maggie is not as secure in her personal life. A secret history with the parish coroner, an overeager amateur archeologist, and intrusions by a documentary producer are distracting her from her mission. When it turns out that someone is stalking Maggie, the tension ratchets up -- leading to a startling conclusion to this taut and fascinating sleuthing experience.

The importance of New Orleans in American culture has made the city's place in the American imagination a crucial topic for literary scholars and cultural historians. While databases of bibliographical information on New Orleans-centered fiction are available, they are of little use to scholars researching works written before the 1980s. In The New Orleans of Fiction: A Research Guide, James A. Kaser provides detailed synopses for more than 500 works of fiction significantly set in New Orleans and published between 1836 and 1980. The synopses include plot summaries, names of major characters, and an indication of physical settings. An appendix provides bibliographical information for works dating from 1981 well into the 21st century, while a biographical section provides basic information about the authors, some of whom are obscure and would be difficult to find in other sources. Written to assist researchers in locating works of fiction for analysis, the plot summaries highlight ways in which the works touch on major aspects of social history and cultural studies (i.e., class, ethnicity, gender, immigrant experience, and race). The book is also a useful reader advisory tool for librarians and readers who want to identify materials for leisure reading, particularly since genre, juvenile, and young adult fiction—as well as literary fiction—are included.

To abuse or neglect a child, to deprive the child of his or her own identity and ability to experience joy in life, is to commit soul murder. Soul murder is the perpetration of brutal or subtle acts against children that result in their emotional bondage to the abuser and, finally, in their psychic and spiritual annihilation. In this compelling, disturbing, and superbly readable book, Dr. Leonard Shengold, clinical professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine, explores the devastating psychological effects of this trauma inflicted on a shocking number of children. Drawing on a lifetime of clinical experience and wide-ranging reading in world literature, Dr. Shengold examines the ravages of soul murder in the adult lives of his patients as well as in the lives and works of such seminal writers as George Orwell, Dickens, Chekhov, and Kipling. One hopeful note in this saga of pain is that a terrible childhood can, if survived, be a source of strength, as Dr. Shengold finds in the cases of Dickens and Orwell. Provocatively original in its approach to literature and psychology, unsettling in its vivid portrayal of the darker side of human nature, far-reaching in its conclusions, Soul Murder will stand alongside such works as Alice Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child as one of the most important studies of the psyche to appear in decades.

“On the first day of the search, I failed to find the body.” So writes forensic anthropologist and bioarchaeologist Mary H. Manhein—or “the bone lady,” as law enforcement personnel call her. In this, one of dozens of stories recollected in her powerful memoir, Manhein and the state police eventually unearth a black plastic bag buried in the banks of the Mississippi River containing the body of a man who has been missing for five years. After the painstaking process of examining the remains, confirming the victim’s identity, and preparing a formal report for the police, Manhein testifies for the prosecution at the murder trial. The defendant is convicted (in no small part because of Manhein), and “the bone lady” has helped solve yet another mystery. As director of the Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services (FACES) Laboratory at Louisiana State University, Manhein unravels mysteries of life and death every day. In The Bone Lady, she shares, with the compassion and humor of a born storyteller, many fascinating cases that include the science underlying her analyses as well as the human stories behind the remains. Manhein, an expert on the human skeleton, assists law enforcement by providing profiles of remains that narrow the identification process when the traditional means used by medical examiners or coroners to conduct autopsies are no longer applicable—simply put, when bones are all that are left to tell the story. She assesses age, sex, race, height, signs of trauma, and time since death, and creates clay facial reconstructions. Although Manhein enjoys solving high-profile cases, her personal crusade is identifying the John and Jane Does who wait in her lab. Manhein’s own words perfectly characterize her mission: “Identifying a victim can bring peace of mind to the family and can help them to go on with their lives. Sometimes, peace of mind is the only gift that I can give.”

Maggie Andrepont, forensic anthropologist who works for the Orleans Parish coroner's office, is called on to help solve mysterious deaths of young women found floating in New Orleans drainage canals. She also must travel to Venice, Italy, to assist in the analysis of the skeletal remains of young women whose bodies have been found beneath an ancient building there. Complicating things, he life is in danger as she tries to navigate canals on two continents.

The Huffington Post calls Tears of Pearl author Tasha Alexander "one to watch—and read" and her new Lady Emily mystery set in Venice proves it! Years ago, Emily's childhood nemesis, Emma Callum, scandalized polite society when she eloped to Venice with an Italian count. But now her father-in-law lies murdered, and her husband has vanished. There's no one Emma can turn to for help but Emily, who leaves at once with her husband, the dashing Colin Hargreaves, for Venice. There, her investigations take her from opulent palazzi to slums, libraries, and bordellos. Emily soon realizes that to solve the present day crime, she must first unravel a centuries old puzzle. But the past does not give up its secrets easily, especially when these revelations might threaten the interests of some very powerful people.

"Elegantly written, psychologically and historically astute."—Los Angeles Times Book Review From scholar to buccaneer, from outcast to establishment figure, John Donne emerged as one of the greatest English poets. Following Donne from Plague-ridden streets to palaces, from taverns to the pulpit of St Paul's, John Stubbs's "exemplary literary biography" (Harold Bloom) is a vivid portrait of an extraordinary writer and his country at a time of bewildering and cruel transformation.