Instead of trying to find your perfect match in a dating app, we bring you the “Author-Reader Match" where we introduce you to authors you may fall in love with. It's our great pleasure to present Ellen Byron!
Writes:
I write humorous cozy mysteries set in great locations like Cajun Country, New York, and New Orleans. They’re a vacation with murder, wink wink. I love creating fun, quirky characters and plots that keep you guessing. My books also contain around five recipes each, so they’re almost like a combination mystery and cookbook. My Vintage Cookbook Mysteries include special recipes from my own collection of over 100 vintage cookbooks.
WINED AND DIED IN NEW ORLEANS combines my love of New Orleans, especially the majestic historic homes of the Garden District, with my love of wine – lol! - and my personal experience of struggling with whether to evacuate or stick it out when a hurricane approaches.
In this second Vintage Cookbook Mystery, the staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum is under threat of an impending hurricane when they find a stash of priceless, centuries-old wine under the mansion. When my protagonist Ricki, who runs Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbook and Kitchenware Gift Shop at Bon Vee, shares they’re going up for auction, family members of the Charbonnets, the home’s owners, come out of the woodwork. Ricki has to navigate all this and an impending homework, which becomes even more difficult when a particularly obnoxious family member is murdered.
About me:
I’m a native New Yorker but I attended Tulane University – Roll Wave! – where I fell in love with New Orleans and Cajun Country. I began my writing career as a playwright, then moved to Los Angeles, where I wrote for TV shows like WINGS, JUST SHOOT ME, and FAIRLY ODD PARENTS. I live in a mid-century ranch house with my husband and recent college graduate daughter. I love rescue dogs, hikes, dance classes, and disco music.
What I’m Looking For in My Ideal Reader Match:
- Has a wonderful sense of humor…
- Love to travel via reading to New Orleans, New York (my Catering Hall Mysteries, which I write as Maria DiRico), and Cajun Country…
- Love strong, funny protagonists who are creative and smart, as well as skilled amateur sleuths…
- Are brave enough to try a recipe from a murder mystery!
What To Expect if We’re Compatible:
- Lots of fun twists.
- Funny, quirky supporting characters.
- Evocative settings that will make you want to book a trip to the destinations I write about.
- Strong community and family ties.
- Emotional as well as laugh-out-loud moments.
- Romance and recipes!
A Vintage Cookbook Mystery #2
It’s hurricane season in New Orleans and vintage cookbook fan Ricki James-Diaz is trying to shelve her weather-related fears and focus on her business, Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbook and Kitchenware Shop, housed in the magnificent Bon Vee Culinary House Museum.
Repairs on the property unearth crates of very old, very valuable French wine, buried by the home’s builder, Jean-Louis Charbonnet. Ricki, who’s been struggling to attract more customers to Miss Vee’s, is thrilled when her post about the discovery of this long-buried treasure goes viral. She’s less thrilled when the post brings distant Charbonnet family members out of the woodwork, all clamoring for a cut of the wine’s sale.
When a dead body turns up in Bon Vee’s cheery fall decorations, the NOPD zeroes in on Eugenia Charbonnet Felice as the prime suspect, figuring that as head of the Charbonnet family, she has the most to gain. Ricki is determined to uncover the real culprit, but she can’t help noticing that Eugenia is acting strangely. Ricki wonders what kind of secret her mentor has bottled up, and fears what might happen if she uncorks it.
Mystery Cozy | Mystery Amateur Sleuth [Berkley, On Sale: February 7, 2023, Mass Market Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780593437636 / eISBN: 9780593437643]
Ellen’s Cajun Country Mysteries have won multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and Lefty Awards for Best Humorous Mystery. She also writes the Vintage Cookbook Mysteries, the Catering Hall Mysteries (under the name Maria DiRico) and will soon debut a new series, the Golden Motel Mysteries.
Ellen is an award-winning playwright, and non-award-winning TV writer of comedies like Wings, Just Shoot Me, and Fairly Odd Parents. She has written over two hundred articles for national magazines but considers her most impressive credit working as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart.
An alum of New Orleans’ Tulane University, she blogs with Chicks on the Case, is a lifetime member of the Writers Guild of America, serves on the national board for Mystery Writers of America, and will be the 2023 Left Coast Crime Toastmaster. Please visit her on her website.
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