title: Gilded Greed: A Story of Corruption, Revenge and Desire in Old New Orleans
author: Callahan, Kathryn
description: Gilded Greed is a story of corruption, revenge and desire during one of the most divisive political debates of the Gilded Age--the renewal of the Louisiana Lottery in 1891-1892.
   The stakes are high. The Lottery Company wields significant political power through its ill-gotten profits. Opposition erupts, threatening to derail the lottery, an unacceptable financial set-back.
   Desperation and growing tensions define those key characters as they embark on personal journeys of discovery and revenge; romantic liaisons that clash against the cultural divides; illegal activities that prey on the desperate and vulnerable; and acts of violent reprisals in a struggle that transcends the business of the lottery itself.
   Revealed are the darkest secrets of the Gilded Age in New Orleans--gambling, corruption, violence, prostitution, procurement, even Voodoo.
   The streets of the French Quarter are already 175 years old. The rot and ruin of this old center only adds to the contrasts of the times, that Gilded Age. The story is replete with vividly drawn characters--those that embody the new wealth and power of that time, those who live at the lowest end of human misery, and all who toil in between.
   Kathryn Callahan is both a former insurance executive and award-winning bed and breakfast innkeeper on Cape Cod.
   An avid recreational historian, this first novel is the culmination of a fascination with New Orleans that began in 1981 and continues to this day. She's visited this unique American city more than thirty times. She's walked its streets, both the boisterous and the less-traveled, becoming intimately knowledgeable about the buildings and locations referenced in her novel.
   Beginning new chapters in her life is not new, nor without successful precedence. After thirty years in insurance, she followed her dream to own and operate a bed and breakfast inn. Now, with publication of Gilded Greed, she continues her journey along that creative road that has been instrumental to her success as a corporate executive, an entrepreneur and now as an author of historical fiction.
   Callahan resides in historic Plymouth, Massachusetts.
   Visit the author's website at www.KathrynCallahan.com