A zany, disturbing novel set amid the splendors and excesses of New Orleans.. Eleanor Rushing is a first-person narrative tour de force. While Eleanor is blessed with acute powers of observation and the ability to remember everything, her recollections and impressions are nevertheless often at odds with those of the people around her. As her relationship with a local married Methodist minister spins out of control, the loquacious and endearing Eleanor manages to charm us completely. Even as we begin to realize that surviving a childhood marred by tragedy has exacted a terrible toll, we can't...

A darkly comic novel about personal struggles in the face of life's odds - the odds of genetics, of finding and keeping love, and of rescue and survival. Anna Riggs Duffy and her husband, George, live in New Orleans with their two very different identical twins. One day there is a tragic accident, and Anna can save only one of the boys.

New Orleans's idiosyncrasies have been embraced by the world; Patty Friedmann gives us a tender, hilarious portrait of them in her new novel Side Effects. Set in N.O. Drugstore where hardscrabble black Pigeontown meets stuffy white Tulane, Side Effects is peopled with the true New Orleans oddballs who scuffle between the Seasonal Specials and Depends aisles -- all in full view of the pharmacy staff. Proudly plump blonde Luciana Jambon, dreadlocked and neatly compulsive Lennon Israel, and up-from-the-'hood Vendetta Greene have their own dramas of romance and...