This is Emily’s last family vacation before she heads off to college.  Every two years her father takes the family to meet up with his college buddies and their families.  This year the gathering will be on the Outer Banks where Emily will be reunited with three friends who are children of her dad’s friends.  Emily and Heather think that it’s time that they had a summer fling.  As the girls start to checkout the boys of summer, they are thwarted by Adam and Spencer, sons of their father’s friends who now might be seeing the girls in a new light.  Since Emily narrates the story, readers get inside the head of a teenage girl, learning her interests, her lingo, her fears.

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

Posted: October 19th, 2009 under 2000-, 2008, Children & Young Adults, Clark, Catherine, Coast, Dare.
Comments: none

Anyone who has worked in a library or a used bookstore knows that any bag or box of donated books can contain a surprise–a treasure in among the ragged discards of someone’s bookshelves, basement, or attic. When bookstore owner Jo Sharpe agrees to take the odds and ends that once belonged to the late Bridie MacPherson she gets two surprises–a cat she names “Marlowe” and the diary of Cristabel Lamonte. Christabel, the daughter of a plantation owner on the Carolina coast in the early 1700s, lived an unremarkable life until she was kidnapped by the pirate Edward Teach (”Blackbeard”).  Jo becomes obsessed with what happened to Cristabel–and the buried treasure that her diary mentions. As her investigations take her up and down the coast, several murders ensue.

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

Posted: September 25th, 2009 under 2000-, 2004, Coast, Dare, Historical, Hyde, Masek, Linda Lehmann, Mystery.
Comments: none

This three-in-one collection tells the love stories of three women living in three very different times across the state.  Lauralee Bliss’ novella, Journey to Love, begins in London, where Beth Colman has just buried her father.   With nothing left for her in Britain, she sets out for America in 1650 with Judith, her sister, and Mark, Judith’s husband.  The trio is trying to solve the mystery of their ancestors who were some of the original settlers of the lost colony of Roanoke, but Beth is looking for more.  Guided by her strong faith, and the hardy John Harris who knows the country well, she just might find love during the journey.

In Lynn A. Coleman’s Corduroy Road to Love, Ida Mae McAuley is strong, single woman with a brilliant mind for business living in 1830s Charlotte.  She’s caught between the affection of two men, both of whom are hiding something.  Ida Mae must use her keen sense to figure out who she’ll trust with her heart.

Tamela Hancock Murray tells the story of a Drusie, a small town singer in the 1930s in her novella The Music of Home.  Drusie is happy and successful in Sunshine Holler – she’s engaged to the love of her life, Gladdie Gordon, and sings at Church on Sunday with her sister.  When Drusie is given the chance to risk it all and enter showbiz, will Drusie leave her mountain home and loved ones behind?

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

Posted: September 4th, 2009 under 2000-, 2007, Bliss, Lauralee, Coast, Coleman, Lynn A., Dare, Historical, Mecklenburg, Mountains, Murray, Tamela Hancock, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Piedmont, Religious/Inspirational, Romance/Relationship.
Comments: none

Sir Richard Grenville is the hero of this novel about the first attempted settlement of Roanoke Island (1585-1586), while Governor Ralph Lane is portrayed as a weak leader.  Much of the action takes place in England before the expedition sails and after the explorers return.  The reader gets a good sense of Elizabethan politics and the excitement that exploration held for well-born adventurers.  Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, John White, Richard Hakluyt, and Thomas Hariot all have roles in the novel.   The lowly-born Colin provides additional human interest, as he becomes a trusted aide to Grenville and a suitor to one of Grenville’s wards.

This is the fifth novel in Fletcher’s Carolina Series.

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

Posted: August 21st, 2009 under 1940-1949, 1948, Coast, Dare, Fletcher, Inglis, Historical, Novels in Series.
Comments: none

Laurel Ann Lawless thought that her life in New York City was a good one–she had an enjoyable job with a professional fund raising company and her romance with her boss looked like it might be moving toward the altar. In a very twenty-first century plot twist, her world is turned upside down when federal authorities accuse her boss of funneling money to foreign terrorist organizations.  Suddenly Laurel has no paycheck, the boss doesn’t return her calls, and she is hounded by the media.  Laurel’s wise roommate, Peg, suggests that this might be a good time for Laurel to look at the land in Tyrrell County that Laurel inherited from her father.  North Carolina is a whole new world filled with a rich natural environment, different values, and lots of relatives.  To support herself, she takes a retail job on the Outer Banks and moves into an inexpensive rental that a cousin finds for her. After her relationship with her handsome landlord, Cody, starts to heat up, Laurel thinks that she just might stay in North Carolina.

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

Posted: May 10th, 2009 under 2000-, 2005, Browning, Dixie, Coast, Dare, Romance/Relationship, Tyrrell.
Comments: none

Veronica, Guy and their daughter Simpson have made a life moving from one beach town to another, always in search of a better climate or a better construction job for Guy. When Veronica decides she’s finished with the nomadic existence, she and Simpson move into the home of an old friend in Whisper Springs, Maryland. Simpson settles into their new life and begins a relationship with a local. Veronica’s friend Ernie’s health is failing and she appreciates the help of the younger women. Although the move was her idea, Veronica gets restless and begins missing the sea and her husband. Most of the story is centered on the three women in Maryland, but readers also get the occasional glimpse of Guy as he works in the film industry in Wilmington.

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

Posted: April 22nd, 2009 under 2000-, 2005, Bache, Ellyn, Coast, Dare, New Hanover.
Comments: 2

Smyth Parker arrived at his Outer Banks beach house hoping for a quiet escape from the stresses of his regular life. What he found was a woman he didn’t know renting his cottage. That woman, Meg Thomas, has run away from her life in Chicago and is hiding from her cruel and abusive husband Bradford. Bradford wants to find her, not because he wants her back, but because she is a witness to his murder of a Chicago district attorney and threatens his new political aspirations. Meg and Smyth make a romantic connection, and when the mobsters catch up up with her, Smyth becomes her protector. The two hide out and dodge a sniper on the isolated Newport Island. Although there is a Newport, NC on the coast, there is not a Newport Island. The author based this fictional location on North Carolina’s uninhabited Portsmouth Island.

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

Posted: April 7th, 2009 under 2000-, 2008, Coast, Dare, Hyde, James, Maddie, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Romance/Relationship, Suspense/Thriller.
Comments: none

Gabriel North, a young man employed by Lord Burghley, is known to have a way with women. In an attempt to avoid war with the Native Americans at Roanoke, Burghley sends North there to seduce the Secota princess, Naia.  The English are convinced that the tribe controls gold mines and pearls beds, and they want those resources for themselves. North goes with Ralph Lane’s 1585 expedition, but the results are not what North’s handlers wanted.  In an attempt to make things right, North returns with John White’s colonizing expedition in 1587. The story is narrated by Robert Mowbray, another one of Burghley’s spies, and the action moves back and forth between America and England.  The mixed intentions, misunderstandings, physical deprivations, cruelty, and bad luck that attended the English on Roanoke are well portrayed, along with betrayals on both sides of the Atlantic.

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

Posted: March 6th, 2009 under 2000-, 2009, Coast, Dare, Historical, Lawrence, Margaret.
Comments: none

The second novel in the Pea Island Gold trilogy, Hitler’s Judas takes place during the same time period as series’ first novel, Sunday’s Child. However, this story is told from the perspective of two Nazis. One, Horst Van Hellenbach, is a celebrated U-boat captain, while the other is one of Hitler’s closest confidants. The other is Hitler’s right-hand man, Martin Bormann, who sees the end of the Third Reich coming and plans to escape to Pea Island, NC with a fortune in Nazi gold. After the Germans arrive on the North Carolina coast, Von Hellenbach’s story becomes entwined with that of Pea Island resident Sunday Everette.

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

Posted: January 6th, 2009 under 2000-, 2007, Coast, Dare, Historical, Lewis, Tom, Novels in Series, Suspense/Thriller.
Comments: none

This brief novel was written during National Novel Writing Month in 2005.  It’s a fantasy that plays with the idea that all women love pirates.  Aithne Reade was a witch who escaped from Salem in 1692.  Aithne made her way to coastal North Carolina where her daughter Brenna grew up and fell in love with the pirate Red Davies.  Their happiness was cut short, and Brenna remains a restless spirit through the centuries.  When Bernice Sarris and her husband buy an old chest at an auction, Bernice finds within it Brenna’s diary and clothes that have some special properties.  Bernice is delighted by what the pirate jacket in the trunk does for husband’s sexual prowess (nice woman that she is, she even lends the jacket to her friends), but she is unprepared for consequences of wearing Brenna’s dress. The chapters in this book alternate between the colonial era and the present, but the two stories are woven together in a satisfying tale.

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

Posted: December 17th, 2008 under 2000-, 2007, Carteret, Coast, Dare, Hillman, Patrick, Hyde, Science Fiction/Fantasy.
Comments: none