At the end of August 2005, ten-year-old Armani is looking forward to her birthday party in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, where she and her extended family live, but Hurricane Katrina is on the way, bringing destruction and tragedy in its wake.

"The Katrina disaster was not a weather event of summer 2005. It was a disaster a century in the making, a product of lessons learned from previous floods, corporate and government decision making, and the political economy of the United States at large. New Orleans's history is America's history, and Katrina represents America's possible future"--

In 2015, the beautiful jazz funeral in New Orleans for composer Allen Toussaint coincided with a debate over removing four Confederate monuments. Mayor Mitch Landrieu led the ceremony, attended by living legends of jazz, music aficionados, politicians, and everyday people. The scene captured the history and culture of the city in microcosm--a city legendary for its noisy, complicated, tradition-rich splendor. In City of a Million Dreams, Jason Berry...

"Rabbit" Labelle, the charismatic and improbable football star of Offside and unlikely basketball player in Offensive Foul, continues his high school sports journey in Bottom of the Ninth.While struggling to secure his place on the team, Rabbit battles family discord, reels from current events that shake the country, and stands up for his principles in the face of adversity.The impact of his choices will affect everyone around him."Hendrickson personalizes...

New Orleans, 1918. The birth of jazz, the Spanish flu, an ax murderer on the loose.

From hip-hop icon and director RZA comes the explosive CUT THROAT CITY. In a post-Katrina, Lower Ninth Ward marred by governmental and law enforcement corruption, four boyhood friends return to find their homes decimated, with no jobs, and no help from FEMA. Out of options, they reluctantly turn to a local gangster, who offers them one shot at turning their situations around - by pulling off a dangerous heist in the heart of the city. When the job...

A desire they never imagined… New Orleans has always been a musical city, and April Knight quickly fell under its spell. Despite the challenges of poverty and disillusionment, April defied everyone to realize her dream of becoming a celebrated cellist. Buoyed by her success, she's returned to the Ninth Ward to share her encouragement and enthusiasm with the local youth, unaware of a new passion that awaits. Years ago, Damien Alexander encouraged...

Two mothers and their teenage daughters, whose lives collide in a fatal car crash, take turns narrating Ellen Urbani's breathtaking novel Landfall, set in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Eighteen-year-olds Rose and Rosebud have never met, but they share a birth year, a name, and a bloody pair of sneakers. Rose's quest to atone for the accident that kills Rosebud, a young woman so much like herself but for the color of her skin, unfolds alongside Rosebud's...

Phil Sandusky is a nationally renowned plein air artist known for his cityscapes, particularly those of New Orleans. In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Sandusky returned home, postponing repairs to his own damaged house in order to begin recording the devastation in his beloved city. The result is a collection of work that offers a vision of the beauty and fragility of New Orleans and displays the awesome power of nature. The book contains...

These two short novels bookend Poppy Z. Brite's cheerfully chaotic series starring two chefs in New Orleans. The Value of X introduces G-man and Rickey, who grew up in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward and who are slowly realizing there are only two important things in life: cooking and each other. Rickey's parents aren't quite so taken with the boy's plans and get him an impossible-to-resist place at the Culinary Institute of America. In D*U*C*K, Rickey...