SPIRIT OF ST. FRANCISVILLE Images by Darrell Chitty ---- Text by Anne Butler Trying to understand particular places and their importance in particular times, chroniclers of history take many approaches, from paintings to plays, from journals to poems, and volumes of books both fact and fiction. As in the St. Francisville area today's visitors see the results of the happy marriage of felicitous climate and fertile soil in the flowering of fabulous antebellum gardens, so this book happily joins the visual and verbal homages and paeans of praise sung by two artists, one Louisiana's top photographer and the other a local author who contributes that loving insider’s knowledge only a longtime resident-observer can provide. By combining images with words in this full-color photo book, a true labor of love, they have managed to capture just a bit of the magic of St. Francisville, its soul, its heart, its spirit, its timeless charm that is only enhanced by the patina of the passing of years.

ACADIAN PLANTATION COUNTRY COOKBOOK Third in a series of wonderful big hardback history books filled with vintage photographs and a huge number of recipes, this book spans the centuries and the culinary heritage of Louisiana's Acadian Country, from the romance of Bayou Teche through the prairie vacheries, from the salt mines of Tabasco country and fishing villages along the coast to the French-speaking oldsters two-stepping to Cajun fiddles at the Liberty Theater. Reassembled villages like Vermilionville host fascinating living history demonstrations, but you can see living history everywhere you look in this area, and this book includes it all. Published by Pelican Publishing Co. for release November 2007.

BAYOU PLANTATION COUNTRY COOKBOOK Called a veritable social history in the guise of a cookbook, this book is the second in a series published by Pelican Publishing and picks up where Audubon Plantation Country Cookbook left off. Down the west bank of the Mississippi River and along Bayou Lafourche to the coast at Grand Isle, it includes the histories and vintage photographs and related recipes from the big plantations like Nottoway and Oak Alley, Southdown and Laura, as well as the lesser known ones. It features chefs and cooks from world-famous John Folse to Spuddy of Spuddy's Cajun Foods and 92-year-old Ms. Aline Foret who won the dance contest at the Abbeville Omelette Festival just a few years back and says we might not all be stars but we can twinkle!--and boy can she cook! For those who lost Grandma's recipe books in floods or storms, chances are they'll find them right here. Hardback. Available in bookstores everywhere; also available from pelicanpub.com or from Butler Greenwood Plantation website.

A Little Bit Of Heaven Right Here On Earth

The definitive tour book to the St. Francisville area, written by a native-born professional author who ensures that the visitor won't miss a thing. 

Plantations, gardens, B&Bs, restaurants, shops, recreation...from the world's largest bald cypress to the wildest rodeo in the South.

and Big Fat Aunt May

More Stories About Little Chase

and Big Fat Aunt May

Award-winning children's stories which are lessons in life, learned from a quintessentially southern childhood, replete with hounddogs under porches and tomcats in baby clothes, bourbon pies and wise old aunties next door.  Beautifully illustrated by nationally recognized artist Murrell Butler, with color photographs of many of the characters as well, these volumes also contain the treasured recipes for all the old southern delicacies which make life worth living.  Like children's tea parties and some of the other old-fashioned entertainments in the Little Chase stories, these recipes shouldn't be allowed to die out.  Sadly lacking is the child nourished on the immediate gratification of frozen Sara Lee, however tasty, rather than the mouth-watering anticipation of slowly cranking the ice cream freezer, or following with wide eyes the progress of the flaming Plum Pudding to the Christmas dinner table, or marveling at the tiny red spots of currant jelly topping dollops of meringue adrift in a sea of custard in the Thanksgiving Floating Island.

           

Angola: Louisiana State Penitentiary, A Half-Century of Rage and Reform

Dying To Tell

Weep for the Living

Hair-raising true crime books centering around the country's most infamous maximum-security prison, 18,000-acre Angola, subject of a number of recent documentaries and movies.

ANGOLA details the fascinating history of the prison, from its origins as huge cruel cotton plantations to its days as America's bloodiest penitentiary.

DYING TO TELL examines more contemporary death cases, homicides and executions, as well as the lessons we can learn from them about the origins of criminal behavior and the correctional programs which might best prevent it, programs which need to be implemented not at the end of a criminal career but before the beginning of one.

WEEP FOR THE LIVING examines what caused the respected retired criminologist to pick up a pistol and shoot his wife five times as she rocked on her plantation home's gallery.  In this riveting book, the wife who miraculously survived provides some answers with remarkable candor, compassion and even humor.  This is not fiction; it's even stranger.  Updated Pelican edition out spring 2005; order online from pelicanpub.com or from bookstores everywhere.

Lost and Found at the Plantation Bed & Breakfast

Writer Anne Butler thought operating a B&B on her family plantation would be isolating and the ruination of her writing career.  Boy, was she wrong!  Now the world comes to her in all its glory, and this consummate storyteller finds a hilarious or touching story behind every door, from the modest pentecostals in the pool with the bikini-clad hooker from New Jersey to the naked man in the driveway.  And you won't believe what gets left in the Lost and Found department (the staff wishes more of it came in plus sizes), but actually a whole lot more gets found.

Fabulous color photos by Darrell Chitty, one of Louisiana's best professional photographers.