Outer Banks lore and description are nicely woven into this tale of murder. When two Ohio families come to the Outer Banks for a vacation, they find that they haven’t left all their troubles behind.  Byron Butler, father and minister, is still tormented by disturbing dreams, and young Dugan Walton struggles to be understood and accepted.  Dugan is thought to be “the boy who cried wolf” when he claims to have seen a young woman’s body in the weeds.  Byron’s daughter, Chrissy, is a happy young woman of eighteen, but when she starts seeing a street magician she meets on the trip, her father’s unease increases. Bryon comes to believe that God has brought him to Corolla to prevent a killer from murdering another young woman.

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

Posted: November 6th, 2009 under 2000-, 2007, Coast, Currituck, Ellis, Joe C., Mystery.
Comments: none

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

Ronnie’s parents divorced when she was in middle school, and her dad left New York City and moved to the North Carolina coast.  It’s three years later, and Ronnie is still angry at her parents–especially her dad. Spending a summer with her father is the last thing that she wants to do, but Ronnie has no choice when her mother sends her and her younger brother Jonah to their dad’s home in Wrightsville Beach.

Ronnie’s been in trouble in New York, and when she falls in with a bad crowd in Wrightsville, it looks like more of the same.  Her dad’s response to her troubles helps to cool Ronnie’s anger.  Ronnie starts to appreciate her father, even as she also begins to fall in love with a local boy, Will.  But as Ronnie makes steps towards peace and happiness, there is a malevolent character who will block her path and something about her dad that she doesn’t yet know.

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

Posted: October 16th, 2009 under 2000-, 2009, Coast, New Hanover, Sparks, Nicholas.
Comments: none

This book picks up the story begun in Chamberlain’s earlier book, Before the Storm. As this new novel opens, Maggie Lockwood is about to be released from prison after serving time for her role in a church fire that killed three people.  Keith Weston wasn’t killed in that fire, but he was badly burned–scarred physically and emotionally.  That he had his own role in starting the fire is something he suppresses, instead focusing his anger on Maggie.  (In this he is not alone, most of the residents of Topsail are outraged that Maggie has been released from prison.) Keith is battling a lot of things–anger, pain, the storminess of adolescence–and he is completely unprepared for his mother to walk out of his life.  But she does.  Maggie’s family tries to help him, and soon all the characters are caught up in a revenge plot that none of them see coming

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

Posted: October 8th, 2009 under 2000-, 2009, Chamberlain, Diane, Coast, Pender.
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

A professional conference at Wrightsville Beach sounds like just the thing that Judge Deborah Knotts needs.  While her new husband is in Virginia tying up some loose ends of his previous life, Deborah can relax on the beach and catch up with old friends over long, leisurely dinners. There are the usual professional ambitions and jealousies on display, but none of it bothers Deborah until one of her colleagues is murdered.  The deceased was shark who had sullied his robes with unethical behavior.  Now that he’s dead all the other judges are talking about him, but Deborah’s interest in the crime is greater than most after she learns that one of those unethical acts involved a man who was Deborah’s big mistake from her college years.  But it turns out that there are many people in Wilmington connected to the murdered judge, and the suspect list grows accordingly.

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

Posted: September 18th, 2009 under 2000-, 2009, Coast, Maron, Margaret, Mystery, New Hanover, Novels in Series.
Comments: none

This is a novel about prejudice and opportunism.  The time is immediately prior to World War II.  Luther Perrin is a wealthy man in Somerset (Wilmington).  Perrin’s racist assumptions fit right in with those of his peers, but his active anti-Semitism is a surprise to his family and  friends.  When Perrin decides to develop one of the beaches near Somerset as a private, Christians-only resort, he hires the unscrupulous Cole Rives as an assistant. Rives eggs on Perrin, with disastrous consequences for many people.

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

Posted: September 18th, 2009 under 1940-1949, 1946, Coast, MacDuffie, Laurette, New Hanover, Novels Set in Fictional Places.
Comments: none

Victoria Porter has a knack for always finding her way into an undesirable situation.  In fact she yearns for them.  Being a maiden at twenty-three in 1746, Victoria has given up on finding a suitable mate and now searches for any man willing to cure her boredom.  During an escapade with a drunken sailor Victoria’s older brother, Jeremiah, dies from a bullet to the back as he tries to prevent Victoria from defiling her honor.  Victoria finds herself alone and suicidal from guilt until Jeremiah’s ghost comes to save her yet again. With Jeremiah’s guidance she begins a quest to find their missing brother. Victoria soon finds herself washed up on a shore after being thrown from a ship during a terrible storm.  Alone and frightened once again, she is rescued by a mysterious man with demons of his own and from a time that is not hers.

Colt MacKenzie is desperate to write another bestselling horror novel in 2007.  He heads to Ocracoke Island in search of his newest topic: The Cult of Teach.  While Colt immerses himself in the legend of The Cult and its obsession over Blackbeard’s Chalice, he comes to the rescue of a strange woman who soon turns his world upside down.

Through the chalice Victoria and Colt discover that their destinies are intertwined and the couple is inevitably thrown into the world of The Cult.  At all costs Victoria and Colt must protect the chalice and reunite it with its rightful owner.  This is the only way to protect themselves and their destinies.

The Cult is the second book in Maddie James’ series The Legend of Blackbeard’s Chalice.

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

Posted: September 14th, 2009 under 2000-, 2008, Coast, Hyde, James, Maddie, Mystery, Novels in Series, Romance/Relationship, Suspense/Thriller.
Comments: none

The Curse is the first book in Maddie James’ series The Legend of Blackbeard’s Chalice.  The story begins in 1718 with Jack Porter in the mist of a mission to retrieve his wife, recently stolen by the pirate Edward Teach (Blackbeard).  Jack successfully fights off Blackbeard and escapes with his wife, Hannah.  His happiness is short-lived; Hannah dies a few days later in Jack’s arms.

Fast forward 300 years to Claire Winslow enjoying a quite, secluded vacation on Ocracoke Island.  When Claire is visited by a mysterious, intoxicating man this vacation quickly turns into an adventure she never expected.  Claire finds herself inexplicably obsessed with her nightly visitor and begins to question whether he is real or fantasy.  Eventually she realizes that her phantom lover is really her husband from a lifetime past, Jack Porter. Thus Claire and Jack embark on a destiny-altering, time-traveling journey to find a chalice constructed of Blackbeard’s skull.  The chalice is their only way of ending the curse leveled by Blackbeard that threatens to keep them apart for eternity.

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

Posted: September 14th, 2009 under 2000-, 2007, Coast, Historical, Hyde, James, Maddie, Mystery, Novels in Series, Romance/Relationship, Suspense/Thriller.
Comments: none

• The Curse. Edgewater, FL: Resplendence Publishing, 2007.
• The Cult. Edgewater, FL: Resplendence Publishing, 2008.

Maddie James builds this series on the fierce history of the pirate Edward Teach (Blackbeard) and the continuing interest in pirate lore.  The novels move back and forth between the 1700s and the present and feature bits of history, mayhem, the supernatural, and star-crossed lovers.

Posted: September 14th, 2009 under Coast, Historical, James, Maddie, Novels in Series, Romance/Relationship, Series.
Comments: 1