Category Archives: Brunswick

Brunswick

Marybeth Whalen. The Guest Book. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012.

Macy Dillon and her family used to take a vacation to Sunset Beach, North Carolina every year. Her most treasured childhood memories are of walking the beach with her mother, brother, and especially her father. But Darren Dillion passed away when she was just sixteen, and Macy’s life has contained a gaping hole ever since. Macy is barely holding it together, working at the local grocery store, and suffering through her mother’s forced celebration of her father’s birthday each year. The only good thing that has happened since Macy’s father’s death is her now five-year-old daughter, Emma, even though Emma’s father walked out on them both shortly after she was born.

But this year at the birthday celebration they hold annually for her deceased father, Macy’s mom announces that they are once more taking a family vacation to Sunset Beach. Macy begins to hope. As a child, her father encouraged her natural artistic talent by asking her to draw a picture in the guest book at their beach house rental each year. Amazingly, another child, a young boy, would answer Macy’s drawings each year with a drawing of his own. The children traded drawings for ten years without meeting, but in what she knew would be her final drawing, Macy promised to come back and find him. Macy is determined that this trip to Sunset Beach will be the one in which she finds the boy. But when they arrive, no less than three men begin vying for Macy’s attention…and any of the three could be the artist. Will she ever find out his identity? And will her family ever find peace without her father?

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2012, Brunswick, Coast, Religious/Inspirational, Romance/Relationship, Whalen, Marybeth

Laura S. Wharton. The Pirate’s Bastard. Kernersville, NC: Second Wind Publishing, 2010.

Edward Marshall’s life in 1741 is a classic tale of the self-made man: by the age of twenty-four, he’s risen from a lowly orphan in Barbados to a master shipwright in  Brunswick, a bustling port town in the great colony of North Carolina. A possible lumber deal with the wealthy merchant Thaddeus Jenkins of Wilmington means that Edward will achieve even greater success; it doesn’t hurt that Jenkins has a beautiful daughter, either. In addition to being extremely pretty, Miss Sarah Jenkins is also smart and adventurous, and Edward is soon head-over-heels in love. But an old seaman in Merchant Jenkins’ employ, Ignatius Pell, thinks he knows Edward from somewhere else, and he  threatens to ruin the young couple’s future happiness by revealing  a dark secret Edward thought he left behind on Barbados. For Edward is not Edward Marshall, but the illegitimate son of the infamous pirate Stede Bonnet and his French mistress Anne Marie, a redheaded lady of the night who passed her crimson locks and steely blue eyes on to her baby son before she tragically died.

Ignatius Pell certainly has a long memory, and trapped in his twisted brain is the location of a rich treasure buried by Bonnet in the islands before his untimely death at the hands of the law. Since Edward has convenient access to many ships and may have a bit of the pirate spirit in him, Ignatius proposes that they set sail in search of the treasure, unless Edward would rather that Miss Jenkins and her father learn of his sordid family tree. What follows is a seafaring adventure of the best kind, but reader beware: just like quests for pirate treasure, pirate tales rarely end in a predictable, or peaceful, manner.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2010, 2010-2019, Brunswick, Children & Young Adults, Coast, Historical, New Hanover, Wharton, Laura S.

Blonnie Bunn Wyche. The Anchor: P. Moore Proprietor. Wilmington, NC: Banks Channel Books, 2003.

I don’t consider my questions treason. I think it’s more about common sense. Pauline Moore is full of questions, and opinions. Everyone is: it is 1764 and the small town of Brunswick, North Carolina, along with the rest of the colony, is stirring under England’s stifling taxation. Unfortunately, since Pauline is female and only fifteen at that, she is expected to stay quiet and serve the real thinkers: men. But when her profligate father leaves town, Pauline is the only one left to take charge of her little sisters, sick mother, and the family tavern. The next few years will be hard ones: this spunky heroine will face the chaos of a budding rebellion, the daily tasks of managing a business and household, and powerful men who assume that her gender makes her a weak and simple target. Pauline is anything but. Educated, strong, and stubborn, she grows to adulthood alongside her new nation, where she imagines everyone, including slaves and women, will be free.

In this beautifully written and precisely researched tale, Blonnie Bunn Wyche provides a stirring look at the colonial town of Brunswick (now in ruins), the birth of the Revolutionary War in North Carolina, and a strong and fiery heroine who dares to stand up for freedom for all. Pauline Moore’s bravery and moral code will resonate in the minds of young women and readers everywhere.

Winner of the Juvenile Fiction Award from the American Association of University Women, and the N.C. Historical Society of Sherrills Ford’s Clark Cox Fiction Award.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2003, Brunswick, Children & Young Adults, Coast, Historical, New Hanover, Romance/Relationship, Wyche, Blonnie Bunn

Blonnie Bunn Wyche. Cecilia’s Harvest: A Novel of the Revolution. Wilmington, NC: Whittler’s Bench Press, 2009.

Cecilia Moore is certain of two things: first, that she has to get away from her hardworking older sister Pauline and the hateful family tavern, and second, that Kenneth Black, atop his fine stallion, Big Boy, is the handsomest man in Wilmington, if not all North Carolina. The winter’s day in 1775 when he asks for her hand in marriage is the happiest of her sixteen-year-old life: he drapes her in a diamond necklace and promises to whisk her away to his prosperous farm full of servants. Cecilia cannot imagine that within a few months, just as the country plunges further into deadly warfare, she too will be fighting for mere survival. Murder, pregnancy, wild animals, and marauding British soldiers make life an unforgiving onslaught, and as quickly as Cecilia’s fortunes rise, the next day only brings more brutal tests. But Cecilia, in addition to being a crack shot with her rifle, is possessed of a nimble mind and a brave heart. Whatever dangers threaten, she finds she has the strength to rise and meet them again and again.

As Americans, we know the story of the Revolutionary War: taxation, then Declaration, followed by fighting and eventually freedom. But what of the smaller stories, the personal tales that won our nation its liberty? Blonnie Bunn Wyche follows her award-winning novel, The Anchor: P. Moore Proprietor, with the suspenseful story of a young woman struggling to survive the bitter years of revolution. Cecilia Moore Black is a stalwart, gutsy heroine who will make an excellent addition to any young adult’s reading list.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library Catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2009, Brunswick, Children & Young Adults, Coast, Historical, New Hanover, Pender, Romance/Relationship, Suspense/Thriller, Wyche, Blonnie Bunn

Ellen Elizabeth Hunter. Murder at the Holiday Flotilla. Greensboro, NC: Magnolia Mysteries, 2010.

Both Ashley and Melanie are filled with happiness as this latest novel in the Murder in Wilmington Series opens.  Melanie is about to become the president of the North Carolina Association of Realtors, a post that she has long desired.  Ashley is a new mother, with twin boys who delight her and Jon and their extended family–Melanie and her husband Cam, half-sister Scarlett, and Aunt Ruby and her husband Binkie.  Family is much on Ashley’s mind, and she is tickled to learn that her sons’ pediatrician, Amy Wood, may also be kin.

Dr. Wood lives on land across the river in Brunswick County that has been in the Wood family for generations.  Ashley hopes to explore her kinship connection–and family tales of hidden treasure–when she helps Dr. Wood restore the house on the property.  But when Ashley and Jon’s first visit to the house is interrupted by an ugly confrontation between Dr. Wood and a neighbor, the reader is alerted to the fact that something is up.  That something involves animal cruelty, land speculation, dirty politics, and old documents that point to the truth about those stories of hidden treasure.  Melanie’s professional goals are put in jeopardy when she is connected to two murders, but once again the sisters emerge relatively unscathed in this cheerful, history-rich mystery.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2010, 2010-2019, Brunswick, Coast, Hunter, Ellen Elizabeth, Mystery, New Hanover, Novels in Series

O. C. Strunk. Satan’s Angels. Baltimore, MD: Publish America, 2009.

Matthew Glass has settled in nicely to the beach house that his friend Christopher Fry left him in An Ever-Fixed Mark.  It’s a comfortable place and Matthew is feeling a sense of peace until one morning he discovers that a young woman’s body has washed up next to his dock.  Matthew is not looking forward to interacting with the local sheriff, a man who Matthew tangled with when he investigated Christopher Fry’s death. Surprisingly, Sheriff Gore seems to have buried the hatchet, and rather than suspecting Matthew of the murder, he only asks Matthew to keep him informed if he learns anything about the case.

Of course, Matthew does not do that.  He delays telling the sheriff that he has met with an older Hispanic man who asked about the woman’s appearance, and he tries to keep the authorities from learning about the activities of the wife of one of his friends.  Belita, the wife of Father Mark Wyatt, an Episcopal priest in North Myrtle Beach, has been letting undocumented workers on their way north stay in a cottage that the couple owns in Sunset, North Carolina.  Readers come to find out that the dead woman and two friends stayed in the cottage, on their way to a modeling school in Wilmington.  When Matthew looks into the modeling school, he learns from Sheriff Gore that the school might be a front for shadier activities, but neither the sheriff nor Matthew is prepared for the connection between the school and one of the most admired citizens in the area.

This is a book with timely themes–Hispanic immigration, celebrity culture–and much older ones–the innocence of youth, the exploitation of the weak, and the urge for vengeance.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2009, Brunswick, Coast, Mystery, New Hanover, Novels in Series, Strunk, O. C.

O. C. Strunk. An Ever-Fixed Mark. Baltimore: Publish America, 2007.

Matthew Glass, psychologist and former university administrator, moved to North Carolina after the death of his wife and daughter.  He’s opened up a cafe and a bookstore in the coastal town of Calabash, and there he connects with a diverse group of people: Tomeka who cooks at the cafe; Tizzy who runs the bookstore; Micki, a college-age Korean orphan whom Matthew intends to adopt; and Christopher Fry, a retiree who befriends Matthew.

As this novel opens, Christopher has just died, in what appears to be an accident. When Christopher’s long-estranged daughter arrives to make funeral plans, Matthew is in for a few surprises: Christopher has left Matthew his house and his dog, and the circumstances of Christopher’s death don’t square with the cautious and precise man that Matthew knew.  As Matthew spends time at his new house he gets a better sense of Christopher’s professional achievements and his compassion, and he uncovers some puzzling things: a stash of the local community newspaper with strange marking on some of the papers and books on the animal-human bond.  With Micki’s help, Matthew follows the clues in Christoper’s things, but those clues lead to cruelty, corruption, and murder, not the treasure that Micki expected.

This is the second book in the Matthew Glass Mysteries.  The first book was set in Maine.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2007, Brunswick, Coast, Mystery, Novels in Series, Strunk, O. C.

Nicholas Sparks. Safe Haven. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2010.

Erin is a young woman on the run from an abusive husband. When she arrives in Southport, North Carolina she adopts the name Katie and begins to make a new life for herself. Her job as a waitress doesn’t pay much, but people are kind and she has a nice place to live. Katie hopes that by keeping to herself she will avoid discovery and entanglements that would necessitate revealing who she is. But the heart has a mind of its own.  Katie becomes close to widower and his two young children, falling in love with him and the children. Katie knows that her husband Kevin, a police officer in Massachusetts, will not let her go and that his possessiveness and violence could endanger not just Katie but Alex and his children.  The reader knows this too since the author takes us inside Kevin’s mind as he makes his way to Katie and a climatic encounter of desperation and violence.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2010, 2010-2019, Brunswick, Coast, Romance/Relationship, Sparks, Nicholas

Marybeth Whalen. The Mailbox. Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2010.

Nineteen years have passed since Lindsey’s first summer in Sunset Beach, North Carolina, when she was introduced to the mysterious mailbox on a deserted stretch of beach. Her beau at the time, Campbell, described the folklore behind it and encouraged her to write a letter to the Kindred Spirit who guards the mailbox. Over the years, Lindsey has dutifully left an account of the year in the mailbox, often describing her life in Charlotte, crumbling marriage, and sadness over losing Campbell.

Now she is back in Sunset Beach with her children, just days after finalizing her divorce. Although Lindsey has hoped over the past year that her husband would come back to her, she is trying to accept her new beginning. She runs into Campbell, and her emotions from nearly two decades ago return. Even though Lindsey felt betrayed  by the way things ended in 1986, she still feels a connection to him. However, Lindsey discovers that Campbell violated her trust by reading her letters in the mailbox over the years. When she decides that she cannot lose him again, Lindsey realizes she and Campbell have always been each other’s Kindred Spirit.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2010, 2010-2019, Brunswick, Coast, Religious/Inspirational, Romance/Relationship, Whalen, Marybeth

Joyce M. Jacobs. Mobile Acres. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2007.

Mobile Acres is a quiet, well-maintained trailer park in Shallotte, North Carolina. Although the stories of how each neighbor got to the mobile home community varies, they are all connected by their choice to live in their tight-knit village. Everyone looks out for each other, no matter the circumstances and with little thought to their fellow resident’s background. When an unthinkable crime takes place at Mobile Acres, the neighbors band together to give each other comfort and to restore their sense of safety. Joyce Jacobs presents trailer park life in a way that is rare, highlighting the sense of community that is often overlooked.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2007, Brunswick, Coast, Jacobs, Joyce M.