Cirrus@Austlit

'An endless ocean. A ship full of women she’s never seen before. A small wooden box containing the remnants of her life. Clutching her few belongings Gisella is shipped to strange shores to meet an unknown husband. Sebastian.

'Sold and abandoned by her father into a nunnery, Gisella sails to the shores of New Orleans with her sister Casket Girls to provide French wives for the gentlemen of the fledgling city. A gentleman husband of her own and an uncertain future. Passengers whisper that the filles a la cassette are vampyre. But while the girls laugh at such silly superstition, they disguise their own fears that they are to be brides of such a monstrosity...'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Shared-universe series that is based (very loosely) on the story of the 'casquette girls', French women sent from France to the French colonies of Louisiana to marry. The name derives from the small chests ('casquettes') in which they carried their belongings. There is some debate about whether the casquette girls, traditionally held to be the ancestors of white French Creoles, ever existed as such.

The series takes the concept of the 'casquette' more literally, presenting them as caskets or coffins, and draws in the concept of vampirism.

Only books by Australian authors are individually indexed.