Big Easy Backroad

In the sizzling tradition of James Lee Burke and Lawrence Block, author Martin Hegwood brings Dixie grit and flavor to a novel of a Florida Gulf mob murder that twists faster than a back swamp road. After drowning in a barmaid's sea-green eyes, P.I. Jack Delmas agrees to track down her missing pal-only to find him murdered, voodoo-style. Delmas suspects the druglord who rules New Orleans' underworld. But when a second murder rocks the city, Delmas is the chief suspect. Trapped in a web of corruption and secrets, Delmas has one chance to clear his name-and maybe save his bride.

Cradled in Canada’s geographic centre, Manitoba is home to serene stretches of wilderness interspersed with charming rural communities and rich pockets of outdoor recreation opportunity. Over half of the province’s population lives in the capital city of Winnipeg, leaving the rest of Manitoba wide-open for exploring. In the south, the landscape is a diverse mix of tall grass prairie, pine forest and even desert-like sand dunes. As you move north you will encounter the majestic rock of the Canadian Shield and, further north still, a strip of Arctic tundra along Hudson Bay. Throughout the province, lakes of all shapes and sizes dot the landscape, creating an incredible abundance of fishing opportunities. Features - Map Key & Legend - Topographic Maps - Detailed Adventure Section >> Backroad Attractions, Fishing Locations, Hunting Areas, Paddling Routes, Parks & Campsites, Trail Systems, ATV Routes,Snowmobile Areas, Wildlife Viewing, Winter Recreation, Service Directory, Accommodations, Sales & Services, Tours & Guides, Index, Adventure Index, Map Index, Trip Planning Tools,

Dauphin Island, AL: Three college students arrive at Jason Summers' beach house for the last big party of the season. Nausea strikes hard before the first shot of Tequila is ever poured: blood, everywhere. They have found the bodies. Reporters and politicos scramble for position. Three of the victims belong to the Beautiful People: a smooth entrepreneur, a Beauty Queen, a News Anchor. The fourth, Rebecca Jordan, is forgotten in the frenzy that surrounds the killings. Rebecca's mother, disgusted by the desecration of her daughter's memory, seeks help from Private Investigator Jack Delmas. He reluctantly accepts, and soon finds that appearances are not what they seem in this quaint community. Beneath its surface lies a netherworld peopled by debauched jet-setters, international smugglers, and cunning, unpredictable murderers. It is a world where innocence can be swallowed whole, and where the best intentions of people like Rebecca Jordan can distort into grisly bloodbaths like the one that consumed her. To win justice for Rebecca, Delmas allies with Jimbo McInnis, an oversized, fast-living, Hemingway-quoting deputy sheriff. Together, they must delve behind the madness to find the truth. Doing so may cost them more than their reputations.

Genealogist Torie O'Shea Finds That Her Own Family Tree Is Rooted In Murder. . . The December annual O'Shea family reunion is just kicking off when genealogist and town historian Torie O'Shea discovers a bad apple in her family tree. Someone has sent her several newspaper clippings reporting a fifty-year-old unsolved murder. The dead man is her great-grandfather-shot on his own front porch while his family was trapped inside. Everybody knows great grandpa Keith died in a hunting accident. Or did he? Between fussing over too many house guests, husband, children-and the surprising news she's once again in the "family way"-- Torie gets a sneaking suspicion the truth may be as deadly now as it was fifty years ago. Soon she's shaking the family tree, never anticipating the shocking truths ready to drop-along with a motive for murder that could mean it's history for Torie as well.

Texas has hill country? Who knew? Well, the Lonely Planet guide to Texas, which calls the Hill Country “rightfully one of the state’s biggest tourist draws . . . an area of gently rolling hills and valleys freckled with cacti and cattle ranches, lined with rivers and dotted with peaceful, picturesque little towns.” And any self-respecting Texan might know as much. Forty miles west of Austin and fifty north of San Antonio, the Hill Country is within an easy drive of two of the state’s biggest cities, putting back-country quiet and beauty within reach of countless urban dwellers seeking respite. This book brings the remarkable Hill Country of Texas home to the back roads traveler. Whether it’s wildflowers you’re drawn to, or dude ranches, natural areas, historic sites, or quaint Texas towns redolent of history, this is your passport to an experience like no other. Backroads of the Texas Hill Country introduces travelers and armchair tourists alike to the emerging wine country of the Lone Star State, the meticulously preserved culture of East European immigrants, the “cowboy capital of the world” (Bandera), and the childhood home of LBJ at Johnson City. Follow this irresistible guide into the Hill Country, and find yourself deep in the heart of Texas.

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.

By taking the literary traveler on seven preplanned tours—through the Delta, along Highway 61, to the heart of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha country, to sites near Interstate 55 and the Natchez Trace, to the piney woods of East and South Mississippi, and along the sun-struck Gulf Coast—this book captures the phenomenal abundance and diversity of Mississippi literature. More than a guidebook, this book includes capsule biographies and well over a hundred photographs of writers, their residences, and their literary environments. It also provides maps and gives explicit directions to writers’ homes and other literary sites. The sheer number of writers discovered, recovered, and claimed by Mississippi will astonish travelers both from within and from without the state. Included are not only such major figures in the pantheon of American literature as William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, and Richard Wright but also the less well-known. Every nook and cranny of the state claims a piece of Mississippi’s literary heritage. Literature pervades Yazoo City, Jackson, Greenville, Oxford, Natchez, the Gulf Coast, and the Delta Blues country. Willie Morris, Richard Ford, and Beverly Lowry have declared that a famous writer’s presence in their hometowns convinced them that they too could be writers. As the locations bring to life the connection of ordinary rituals with the stuff of fiction, poetry, and memoir, these hands-on tours make evident the special cross-pollination of writer and community in Mississippi.

Professor Amanda Blake's body is found in a freezing lake. A novel about murder and tenure at the Universith of Notre Dame.

A millionaire is found murdered in his mansion and his relatives are suspected of foul play. When they learn that the cat is the main beneficiary and whoever looks after her will control the money, the relatives try to win the cat's affections. Martin's Press.

In the sultry southern style of James Lee Burke and the hip P.I. voice of Dennis LeHane comes a major new figure on the mystery scene, Martin Hegwood. His first novel, Big Easy Backroad introduced PI Jack Delmas and was a big southern hit. Critics and fans alike fell for his atmospherically dead on, visual writing and his ultra compelling protagonist. Like all Bayou bred men, Jack enjoys a cold bottle of Dixie beer, and a little bit of danger. This time out, Jack finds himself caught in the midst of a deadly struggle for control of Biloxi's waterfront. Casper Perinovich has shrimped the waters off Point Cadet and Biloxi for longer than anyone can remember. Pushing 80, Casper is still one of the toughest and smartest old birds left on a waterfront increasingly being taken over by big money casinos. To Jack, Casper is like a second father. In need of a break, Jack heads out fishing with Casper, only to have disaster strike. Casper, a lifelong Point Cadet, Mississippi resident and vocal oppoent to the casino development encroaching on this Gulf Coast town, gets home, flips on his light switch, and his house explodes around him. The value of Casper's land, it seems, may have been worth killing over. And as good a man as Casper was, he's got a long list of enemies. Everyone from a band of Vietnamese gangs, some angry local rednecks, Casper's money hungry niece, and even the mayor himself! Jack's determined to find the killer, all the while knowing that the real murderer may be staring him in the mirror all along. This is a murder story, but it's also the story of a city. Through thorough research and a lifelong love of the south, Hegwood captures modern day Biloxi. It's a Biloxi poised on the brink of moving beyond its shrimping and seafood canning days and into a world where boats that never sail house some of the country's busiest casinos just a foot away from land. Hegwood richly evokes the passing of an era, in a thrilling mystery that will keep you turning the pages long after the last boat sails.