Even as The New Republic claims in their September 10, 2010 article that “the literary response to Hurricane Katrina has been almost nonexistent,” NewSouth begs to differ. While writer Chloe Schama believes that “no major literary figure has illustrated the effects of the hurricane,” NewSouth proudly points to Tony Dunbar’s Tubby Meets Katrina, published in the wake of the storm.

Tony Dunbar, a New Orleans-based attorney and award winning author, created his seventh mystery in the Tubby Dubonnet series in order to capture the grim picture of the Crescent City in those days of chaos only five years ago. As Tubby’s tries to save his kidnapped daughter, Dunbar explores the struggles surrounding the Convention Center, the flooding jail, and the incompetence of state and local authorities. Dunbar’s depiction of the aftermath surrounding this horrific event has received high praise and many glowing reviews; Kirkus Reviews wrote that “Dunbar ushers in the era of Hurricane Katrina fiction [and] scores an even more decisive bull’s eye in his account of the disaster after the disaster.”

Additionally, Rod Davis, a Texas-based writer and editor and author of the Pen/Southwest Fiction Award-winning Corina’s Way, spent several weeks in New Orleans during the aftermath of Katrina and was able to meet with survivors and see the damage firsthand. He is writing a new novel based on of his “kind of witness-bearing” that he will forever remember. On his blog, Ochosi Chronicles, Davis writes:

It has taken me most of this time to feel that I could write about it in fiction, which I am now doing for a new novel for NewSouth Books. … We all remember what happened, and what didn’t happen, and what needs to happen. … I think everyone who cares about the South can never forget the meaning of Katrina. And not just the damage from the storm. The way the most important city in the South, if not the U.S., was left to die. And that it has not done so.

While some may believe that the proper literary respect has not been given to Hurricane Katrina and its aftershocks, NewSouth Books, along with Tony Dunbar and Rod Davis, has been working hard to present titles that convey the experience of the storm.

Alabama Public Radio’s Don Noble has given a glowing review of Tony Dunbar’s recent mystery Tubby Meets Katrina on Noble’s radio program Bookmark. Noble said, “It is always a treat to become acquainted with a new mystery hero. Tubby Dubonnet is such a treat.”

The seventh mystery in the Tubby Dubonnet series, Tubby Meets Katrina tells of Dubonnet’s return to New Orleans, just as Hurricane Katrina hits. In the chaos, an escaped psychopath assaults and then stalks Tubby���s daughter. Tubby must use his wits and his connections to protect himself and his family while trying to restore his home and help bring his beloved city back to life. The fast-paced story includes incisive vignettes of the dangerous days just after Katrina hit and of the frustrating weeks that followed.

From the review:

This novel paints a grim picture of the Crescent City in those days, the chaos at the Convention Center and on the interstate overpass, the flooding of the jail, the looting, the mysterious absence of FEMA, the incompetence of state and local authorities.

One of the strengths of the six earlier Dubonnet novels was Dunbar’s detailed, loving description of the city’s pleasures, especially the mouthwatering pleasures of New Orleans food. There is no pleasure and no food in this book. Everyone is eating canned goods or, later, meals ready to eat. Dunbar is a fine describer of food, in the tradition of Hemingway and, more recently, Jim Harrison.

We can hope that when New Orleans gets back somewhere close to normal, upcoming Tubby Dubonnet novels will again be set in the Caf?� Du Monde, Antoine’s, and Commander’s Palace, and the characters will again be eating beignets, trout almondine, and oysters Rockefeller.

Read or listen to the full review from Alabama Public Radio. Tubby Meets Katrina is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon, or your local or online book retailer.

If you’ll be attending the Southern Festival of Books this weekend in Memphis, Tennessee, don’t miss our wonderful NewSouth authors, including Tony Dunbar (Tubby Meets Katrina), John Egerton (premiering Ali Dubyiah and the Forty Thieves), C. S. Fuqua (Music Fell on Alabama), Frye Gaillard (Watermelon Wine), Jennifer Horne (Working the Dirt), John Pritchard (Junior Ray), Carroll Dale Short (Turbo’s Very Life), and Sue Walker (In the Realm of Rivers).

The festival, sponsored by Humanities Tennessee, takes place at the Cook Convention Center and Main Street Mall in downtown Memphis. For more information, visit the Southern Festival official website.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reviewed Tubby Meets Katrina in their October 8 books section, calling it a “masterful job.” Reviewer Rheta Grimsley Johnson notes, “Verdict: It’s nice to have the pudgy good guy [Tubby Dubonnet] on the case.”

From the review: “[Author Tony Dunbar takes us to the Convention Center, to New Orleans’ interstate ramps and rooftops, and into the minds of those who stayed behind, or quickly returned to inventory their worldly goods. Tubby actually enjoys the survivalist surge he feels immediately after the storm. Slowly, quite movingly, realization and anger set in for the middle-aged hero. … There’s a bad guy, of course ���- an escaped psychopath ���- and a rescue or two. The best things about the book, though, are the details Dunbar gleaned from actually living through Katrina: the way the stars looked at night in a New Orleans with no electricity, for instance. And the odd concoctions stranded people ate to stay alive …”

Read the full review at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Tubby Meets Katrina is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon, or your local or online book retailer.

November 2006’s issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, “the world’s leading mystery magazine,” salutes the city of New Orleans, including a short story by author Tony Dunbar. The issue features stories solely devoted to New Orleans, and all advertising proceeds from the issue go toward relief and rebuilding New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Additionally, in The Jury Box column, John L. Breen offers additional praise for Dunbar’s Tubby Meets Katrina. He writes, “The first fully post-Katrina suspense novel is a first-rate job, crisply written and expertly paced, offering a harrowing, sometimes sardonic description of the city���s physical and psychological state before, during, and after the disaster.”

Tony Dunbar’s short story in the magazine is called “Monday Morning at the Pie Pie Club.”

Tubby Meets Katrina is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon, or your local or online book retailer.

In its coverage of the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, New Orlean’s Times Picayune newspaper has offered special mention of New Orleans writer Tony Dunbar’s Hurricane Katrina novel Tubby Meets Katrina. In Susan Larson’s article “Wordstorm,” she mentions Tubby Meets Katrina as the first Hurricane Katrina novel; in her article “Read ‘Em and Weep: Looking at the Katrina books, my way,” Larson goes on to recall drinking lemonade with Dunbar one afternoon after the storm.

“Writers are the sharecroppers of this situation,” Dunbar said. “First there was the ‘I can’t believe it’s going to happen,’ then the shock that it did happen, and now the determination to rebuild and the exuberance of friendship and community.”

Tony Dunbar also participated this past week in “The Katrina Collection: An Afternoon of Authors,” sponsored by the Press Club of New Orleans. Joined by authors including Douglas Brinkley (The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast) and Jed Horne ( Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City), Dunbar signed books and participated in a one-hour discussion, to be broadcast later on C-SPAN 2.

Tubby Meets Katrina is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon, or your local or online book retailer.

Summer’s here, and the whole country’s certainly feeling the heat! So what’s the deal with USA Today saying there’s no hot beach books this summer? Didn’t they read the Charlotte Observer review of Mark Ethridge’s Grievances, which called the mystery novel “a must for your beach bag”? And Windows a Bookshop in Louisiana certainly has plenty to read, as they list Tony Dunbar’s Tubby Meets Katrina among the new books by their favorite authors that summer brought. So if you’re headed out to the beach, don’t forget these great titles from NewSouth–they may not cool you off, but they’ll definitely keep your mind off the heat!

The New York Times Book Review published a feature on Sunday called “Hell and High Water,” looking at two non-fiction accounts of the Hurricane Katrina devistation. The first, The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Co by historian Douglas Brinkley, showcases interviews with New Orleans and Southern residents who weathered the storm, weighing in at over 700 pages. The second, Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City written by New Orleans newspaper editor Jed Horne, is a more ground-level look at New Orleans both before and after the hurricane. Both of these books are available for order at a discount rate from the NewSouth Bookstore, (866) 639-7688.

Of course, NewSouth also recommends the first work of fiction set during the storm, Tubby Meets Katrina, by New Orleans attorney Tony Dunbar. Tubby Meets Katrina has already been hailed by a number of reviewers, and Library Journal called Tony Dunbar’s portrayal of New Orleans “remarkable.” Tubby Meets Katrina is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon, or your local or online book retailer.

The July 2006 issue of Library Journal offers high praise for Tony Dunbar’s Tubby Meets Katrina from NewSouth Books, noting that “Dunbar’s portrayal of people putting their lives together and helping others is remarkable.” From the review:

“In Dunbar’s seventh Tubby Dubonnet mystery, the New Orleans lawyer-turned-sleuth returns home from Bolivia the day before Hurricane Katrina hits. While he is trying to stay alive in the devastated city, a psychopathic killer escapes from jail and heads to New Orleans to target Tubby’s daughter. Dunbar’s latest novel is not a true mystery but more of an action tale of survival. Once again displaying his fine command of storytelling, Dunbar takes a major tragedy and shows how anyone can learn to survive and eventually begin to live again. This may be the first novel dealing with Katrina and will not be the last, but Dunbar’s portrayal of people putting their lives together and helping others is remarkable. Dunbar lives in the new New Orleans.”

Tubby Meets Katrina is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon, or your local or online book retailer.

Kirkus Reviews has published a glowing review of NewSouth’s Tubby Meets Katrina, the first New Orleans novel set during the Hurricane Katrina. Tubby Meets Katrina is the latest in New Orleans author Tony Dunbar’s Tubby Dubonnet mystery series, and an important book for anyone gripped by the Gulf Coast tragedy. From the review:

Dunbar ushers in the era of Hurricane Katrina fiction. Just back from the uncertain charms of Bolivia, New Orleans attorney Tubby Dubonnet, who can hardly wait to sleep in his own bed, shrugs off the news of a looming storm: “Good luck? For what? Oh, right. The hurricane.” As the sky darkens and his neighborhood empties, he welcomes the cool breeze and the license to jaywalk. But his attitude changes when the storm downs the trees in his yard, punches holes in his windows and soaks his carpets. Little does Tubby (Shelter from the Storm, 1998, etc.) know that the worst is yet to come. Bonner Rivette, an escaped convict with a long criminal history capped by double murder, has lucked onto the address of Tubby’s law office, where he hunkers down and plots a way to get Tubby’s daughter Christine, a Tulane sophomore, to come to him. Bonner, a connoisseur of chaos who maintains that “I am Katrina,” resembles the hurricane mainly in his frighteningly hit-or-miss propensity for violence. Dunbar scores an even more decisive bull’s eye in his account of the disaster after the disaster-the sad carnival atmosphere in which residents of the Big Easy fight to reclaim their neighborhoods with little help from the government and plenty from casual employees sliding from one essential job to the next. The most unconvincing note is the suggestion that settling Bonner Rivette’s hash will straighten things out. If only.

Tubby Meets Katrina is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon, or your local or online book retailer.