May 11th's Can't Wait Wednesday

 We are midway through the week, so it must be time for Can't Wait Wednesday.  And we definitely have a book that I can't wait to read this week.

I'm featuring Bayou Book Thief by Ellen Byron.

Ellen is an award-winning author, and if you are familiar with her books, you know the awards are well deserved.  This is the first in a new series set in New Orleans.  Here's the official teaser:

Twenty-eight-year-old widow Ricki James leaves Los Angeles to start a new life in New Orleans after her showboating actor husband perishes doing a stupid internet stunt. The Big Easy is where she was born and adopted by the NICU nurse who cared for her after Ricki’s teen mother disappeared from the hospital.

Ricki’s dream comes true when she joins the quirky staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, the spectacular former Garden District home of late bon vivant Genevieve “Vee” Charbonnet, the city’s legendary restauranteur. Ricki is excited about turning her avocation – collecting vintage cookbooks – into a vocation by launching the museum’s gift shop, Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware. Then she discovers that a box of donated vintage cookbooks contains the body of a cantankerous Bon Vee employee who was fired after being exposed as a book thief.

The skills Ricki has developed ferreting out hidden vintage treasures come in handy for investigations. But both her business and Bon Vee could wind up as deadstock when Ricki’s past as curator of a billionaire’s first edition collection comes back to haunt her.

Will Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware be a success … or a recipe for disaster?

The book comes out June 7th, but I've got an eARC already and I will be reading it in the next couple of weeks.  I'm looking forward to meeting this new cast of characters and finding out what they get up to here.

Have a great rest of your week.