Washoe County Library System

Benjamin January, a musician in New Orleans, returns to the slavery of Mon Triomphe, Simon Fourchet's upriver sugar plantation, to unravel secrets and sins which have manifested in a mysterious fire, a poisoning, a murder, and voodoo curse marks.

''A cursed statue . . . A haunted house . . . A seemingly supernatural death . . . The unexpected arrival of a friend from his past plunges musician, sleuth and free man of color Benjamin January into an old, unsolved case in this historical mystery set in New Orleans "Outstanding . . . fastidious period detail, and a consistently surprising investigation" Publishers Weekly Starred Review. December 1840. Surgeon turned piano-player Benjamin January...

In 1835 New Orleans, Benjamin January, a free man of color, becomes caught up in a deadly plot when he rescues opera impresario Lorenzo Belaggio, who has brought a production of the opera "Othello" to town, from a violent attack.

New Orleans, 1840. Freshly home from a dangerous journey, the last thing Benjamin January wants to do is leave his wife and young sons again. But when old friends Henri and Chloe Viellard ask for his help tracking down a missing girl in distant New York, he can't say no. Three weeks ago, seventeen-year-old Eve Russell boarded a steam-boat and never got off it. Mrs Russell is adamant Eve's been kidnapped, but how could someone remove a teenager from...

When Jefferson Vitrack - the white half-brother of Benjamin January's wife - turns up on January's doorstep in the summer of 1838 claiming he has discovered a clue to the whereabouts of the family's lost treasure, January has no hesitation about refusing to help look for it. For the treasure lies in Haiti, the island that was once France's most profitable colony - until the blood-chilling repression practiced there by the whites upon their slaves...

It's 1835 and the relentless glare of the late July sun has slowed New Orleans to a standstill. When Hesione LeGros--once a corsair's jeweled mistress, now a raddled hag--is found slashed to death in a shanty on the fringe of New Orleans's most lawless quarter, there are few to care. But one of them is Benjamin January, musician and teacher. He well recalls her blazing ebony beauty when she appeared, exquisitely gowned and handy with a stiletto, at...