Out of the Easy

Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2013: The French Quarter of New Orleans in the 1950 s calls from the pages of Out of the Easy, beckoning readers to enter a society of madams and debutantes, secrets and desires. Sometimes we set off down a road thinkin we re going one place and we end up another. So it is for Josie Moraine, the daughter of a prostitute rooted in the underworld of the Quarter. Josie wants, more than anything, to trade in the dangerous hand of jokers and pimps her mother laid out, for one filled with books and a life away from the Big Easy. Populated by complex characters you come to love or loathe, but either way can t stop thinking about (even months later), Sepetys beautifully delivers romance and menace in equal parts and what looks to be a predictable ending turns out to be anything but. --Seira Wilson