Going on a field trip to New Orleans in a couple of weeks, so here are a couple of writers who set stories there (there are a lot, but here are two). Ellen Gilchrist, almost an American Colette, and Patty Friedmann - her latest is Side Effects, but I liked the next-to-last one, Secondhand Smoke, better (I think that neighborhood is flooded out now). The first one is "The Exact Image of Mother"(title alone gets two snaps up). V, v. good.