In Hillsboro’town a private battle wages between the spirited Royalist Joscelyn Cheshire and the equally strong-willed Patriot Richard Clevering.  Richard leaves to join the Continental Line, and he is captured by the British and consigned to a prison ship.  He escapes and makes his way back to the Piedmont where Joscelyn, her loyalty divided, hides him.  As the tide of war turns in the Patriots’ favor, Joscelyn is reviled by her neighbors.  Richard, knowing her bravery, defends her.  In her gratitude, Joscelyn comes to see that Richard is the man for her.

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

Posted: August 27th, 2009 under 1900-1909, 1902, Historical, Kennedy, Sara Beaumont, Novels to Read Online, Orange, Piedmont, Romance/Relationship.
Comments: none

Child of the South continues the story started in The Road from Chapel Hill. The War has ended, but Eugenia, Tom, and Clyde all face substantial hardships. Eugenia travels to Wilmington, where she lives with family and searches for the truth about her past and her mother. She also meets and becomes friends with Abraham Galloway, the former Union spy who is a charismatic leader and one of the new African American state Senators in Raleigh. Back in Chapel Hill, Clyde–who was crippled fighting for the Union–struggles to keep his farm afloat and his family alive. Ironically, the former fugitive-slave hunter is helped in this endeavor by Tom, the ex-slave who was given his freedom by Eugenia and at one point captured by Clyde.

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

Posted: June 1st, 2009 under 2000-, 2009, Coast, Historical, New Hanover, Novels in Series, Orange, Piedmont, Scott, Joanna Catherine.
Comments: none

As an expert in abnormal psychology working for the FBI, Dr. Alex Cross is used to calmly solving gruesome crimes, but in Kiss the Girls the case is personal.  His niece–a law student at Duke–is kidnapped while on campus, and he comes to the Triangle to try to help find her.  The North Carolina police and FBI are dealing with “Cassanova,” a man who is collecting beautiful and talented female victims.  There is also a second predator on the loose, a killer on the west coast with the nickname “The Gentleman Caller.”  A break in the case comes when one of Cassanova’s victims, a UNC med student, fights her way free of her captor.  This is the second book in the Alex Cross thriller series and the only one set in North Carolina.  It inspired a 1997 film of the same name starring Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd.

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

Posted: May 6th, 2009 under 1990-1999, 1995, Durham, Novels in Series, Orange, Patterson, James, Piedmont, Suspense/Thriller.
Comments: 2

Frank arrives in San Francisco looking for a missing woman and he convinces his former girlfriend Samantha to help out with the investigation. Samantha, a lawyer suffering from severe insomnia, has just begun an experimental treatment to help her sleep.  After she starts to notice connections between the murders and her sleep clinic, she wonders if she might be the next victim.  The plot with Samantha and Frank takes place in San Francisco, but a series of flashbacks within the story take place in North Carolina locations like Chapel Hill, Durham, and Wilmington.

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

Posted: May 1st, 2009 under 2000-, 2004, Coast, Durham, Fahy, Thomas, Mystery, New Hanover, Orange, Piedmont, Suspense/Thriller.
Comments: none

In the second book of the Casey Jones series, it is Casey’s client who is running out of time. Gail Honeycutt is on death row for killing her husband, her appeals are pretty much exhausted, and she only has a month before her execution, but she continues to declare her innocence. Unfortunately, Gail’s husband was a cop (maybe a dirty one) and Casey’s investigation into his death puts her on the wrong side of the local P.D., including her non-boyfriend Bill. Fingers are pointed at Casey when people connected to the case start dying and the donut-loving private detective has to find the killer before she is framed for his work.

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

Posted: February 5th, 2009 under 1990-1999, 1998, Durham, Humor, Munger, Katy, Mystery, Novels in Series, Orange, Piedmont, Wake.
Comments: 2

• A Killer Collection. New York: Penguin, 2006.
• A Fatal Appraisal. New York : Berkley Prime Crime, 2006.
• A Deadly Dealer. New York: Berkley Prime Crime, 2007.

Molly Appleby left her teaching career and decided to pursue her real passion: collecting. She is now a writer for Collector’s Weekly magazine and, although she lives in Hillsborough, she travels around North Carolina and the rest of the south reporting on various collecting events. It should be a fairly sedate life, but somehow she always seems to get tangled up in murder and mayhem. The author’s extensive knowledge of antiques is evident throughout these cozy mysteries and she also provides the reader with different antiques and collecting tips in each book.

Posted: May 23rd, 2008 under Mystery, Novels in Series, Orange, Series, Stanley, J.B..
Comments: none