Still Time: A New Orleans Time Slip Mystery

by Michael Llewellyn

Michael Llewellyn is the author of eighteen published novels in multiple genres, including historical fiction and mystery. "Still Time" is his first time travel book. His heroine, Madeleine “Maddy” St. Jacques, 33, is a New Orleans librarian with a penchant for history and amateur sleuthing. Her paramour and partner in time crime is Henri Chabrol, 42, a Tulane University professor with access to parallel universes via the secretive August Ones. Assigned to repair potential tears in the curtains of times past, Madeleine is catapulted to 1861 New Orleans where she encounters black masters, white slaves, glamorous courtesans of color and assorted shady souls creating adventure at every turn. When the Civil War erupts and the city falls to the Union, Madeleine experiences love, death and devastating betrayal as she battles to keep history on course and learn why she was sent back in time. It is, most of all, a voyage of self- discovery.

From the back cover:

They were called The August Ones, enigmatic entities manipulating millennia-old time corridors via specially chosen Couriers. Unknowingly conscripted for this role, New Orleans librarian Madeleine St. Jacques attends a 2014 Mardi Gras ball only to be propelled back to 1861 and a vibrant but restless city on the brink of civil war. Her journey takes her to Louisiana’s Isle Brevelle, an exotic topsy-turvy world of black slave owners, and to Five Oaks plantation where she meets her Creole forebears and is tempted by the unthinkable. Warned by a voodoo priestess that a mysterious Spaniard holds the key to her mission and that she will find him "in the last possible place she would think to look," Madeleine’s search grows desperate when war ignites and New Orleans falls under siege. Each day brings new challenges as she is drawn deeper into a world of duplicity and passion, deceit and murder. Shadowy veils are lifted one by one as Madeleine sails on a time voyage as serpentine as the Mississippi River before discovering her destiny as a Courier and why she must fulfill it while there is "Still Time." ©2014, Scaramouche Publishing. All rights reserved.

“Michael Llewellyn’s latest book, ‘Still Time,’ is a new genre of historical time travel/mystery/thriller that delights and informs the reader. Steeped in New Orleans present and past, it creates a steamy, sultry atmosphere that has you craving gumbo and beignets from beginning to end. Heroine Madeleine St. Jacques transforms satisfyingly from quiet librarian to a cunning, action-oriented Southern belle when she’s chosen by transcendent ‘forces’ to fulfill a critical mission in the past. Llewellyn’s Civil War research is accurate and illuminating which will make historical fiction readers happy, and his time-travel devices are innovative and clever, so time-slip fans will appreciate that as well. A fun romance is thrown in for good measure, so we get a well-rounded introduction to “Maddy” and her friends in this first of what I hope will be a long-running series. A true page-turner, I was up until 2 a.m. finishing it!” –Mary F. Burns, author of “The Spoils of Avalon”

413 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 21, 2014

About the author

My mom claims I started writing with my first box of Crayolas, with the dining room wall as my tabula rasa. I come by my passion naturally with a grandmother who was a published novelist and Methodist minister grandfather who wrote powerhouse sermons. The women in my family were memorists before it was trendy and a writer cousin, James Agee, won the Pulitzer. I hail from Fountain City, TN, and carry all the picaresque baggage from a '50s Southern childhood.

I spent the '70s and '80s in Greenwich Village. Although I never wrote the Great American Novel (as planned) I sold a bunch of Southern historical romances and adventure sagas before heading to New Orleans to water my Southern roots. My fascination with that city led to more books, my newest being "Creole Son." It's about French painter Edgar Degas and his sojourn to 1872 Louisiana that forever changed his style.

My ongoing wanderlust eventually landed me in California Wine Country which is surely some of God's most beautiful handiwork. When I'm not working on my new book I'm hiking the hilly vineyards and seaside cliffs and wondering how this Tennessee boy got so far from home.

Reviews

[Yves Fey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still Time brings New Orleans vividly to life. The detailed descriptions of the city, its diverse scents and textures, the lavish food and clothing, are all rich and sensuous, one of the author’s greatest strengths. The time travel element allows the play of the modern day perceptions of the liberated heroine, Maddy, against the sensibilities of the fascinating cast of period characters, especially my favorite, the courtesan Félicité. The caste system of the time is far more complex and convoluted than I realized, even though I’ve read a fair amount about the era. Some of the gens de couleur libre kept white slaves. Although there are dark elements, and the history is filled with conflict and drama, the tone makes Still Time primarily an entertaining romp through history that allows the reader to learn more about this enthralling period. While I preferred the deeper emotional complexity of Llewellyn’s fascinating book about in Impressionist painter Degas, Creole Son, this was an engaging read.