Some doors don't stay open. They stay watched.
The Ladies expected their New Orleans visit to end. Instead, what they uncovered at the train station leaves them with more questions, greater danger, and the unsettling certainty that someone knows they are paying attention.
As Carnival approaches, the city prepares to celebrate. Behind the masks, music, and glittering society gatherings, however, something far more calculated is moving through warehouses, government offices, financial institutions, and the drawing rooms of the Garden District. Information is being routed. Money is changing hands. Respectable men are making decisions they cannot?or will not?explain.
Edith watches who benefits. Edna searches for the system beneath the crime. Nettie Ida listens to the people society overlooks. Louella applies pressure with impeccable manners and very little mercy. And CeeCee opens the doors that New Orleans keeps closed to almost everyone else.
While Henri and Ingrid pursue the intelligence trail, Judge Landry and his nephew confront corruption reaching from Baton Rouge toward Washington. Floyd, Wilburn, Button, and Herman investigate through the worlds of shipping, wartime intelligence, finance, and law. Each follows a different thread. None can see the entire design alone.
But as Carnival reaches its dazzling conclusion, the threads begin to converge?and the Ladies discover that the war may be over, but the systems it created are not.
A Garden District Mystery is Book Two in The Misadventures of the Ladies Who Lunch, a richly atmospheric series blending Southern humor, historical mystery, quiet social power, and postwar intrigue.
