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 novel’s North Carolina setting is a bit of a surprise since the author, DuBose Heyward, is strongly associated with that other Carolina–particularly the city of Charleston, the setting for his novel Porgy.  Porgy was the basis for Porgy and Bess, the play, movie and great George Gershwin opera.

Angel is set among the mountaineers of the Great Smokies.  Buck Merritt is a handsome and daring young bootlegger, and the sweet and beautiful Angel Thornley is in love with him.  Angel’s father, a preacher, is opposed to her relationship with Buck.  When Reverend Thornley betrays Buck to the revenue officers, Buck is sent away to do hard time.  What the reverend didn’t know is that Angel is pregnant with Buck’s child.   To save his reputation in the community, Rev. Thornley arranges a hasty marriage between Angel and old Stan Galloway.  Angel and her son spend six years with Galloway until the construction of a road through the mountains brings job opportunities for Galloway and a convict road crew that includes Buck.

This is a lyrical novel that conveys both the beauty of the mountains and the values of the individuals who live there.  The scenes at Rev. Thornley’s revival services are especially vivid.

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

Posted: November 6th, 2009 under 1920-1929, 1926, Heyward, DuBose, Mountains.
Comments: 1

Joe Winston is the type of guy that girls flock to.  He has no problem with getting his pick of the litter until he meets Luna Clark.   Luna knows better than to fall for Joe’s usually irresistible charms and, of course, this drive’s Joe crazy.  He pursues and she ignores until Luna finds herself the new guardian of her two young cousins.   Now Luna needs Joe’s help to protect the kids.   The group becomes an instant family as Joe and Luna grow closer, realizing their true feelings.

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

Posted: November 2nd, 2009 under 2000-, 2003, Foster, Lori, Romance/Relationship.
Comments: none

Ella Dubose, a 70-something Southern lady, has been a Charlotte resident for almost a half a century, but she left some part of her heart in her hometown of Charleston, South Carolina.  When her younger children start to pester her about her her driving and her health (they thinks she’s getting senile), Ella takes off for a small inn at Myrtle Beach.  There she reflects on her early life in South Carolina, especially her relationship with the man who might be the father of her eldest son.  She summons that son to join her at the inn.  Will she have the courage to tell him about her early life, or will the prospect of a romance with another guest at the inn turn her mind to happier things?

Most of the action in this novel takes place in South Carolina.

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

Posted: November 2nd, 2009 under 2000-, 2008, Mecklenburg, Piedmont, Villas, James.
Comments: none

Zeb Dupree is down on his luck in New Orleans when he finds a one-eyed abandoned puppy in a trash can.  Zeb’s wife is leaving him for another man, his father recently committed suicide, and he just lost his job as a newspaper editor.   In the midst of this mid-life crisis, Zeb heads back to Cedar Springs, North Carolina, the town where he attended college on a scholarship in the 1960s.

The novel alternates between the present and flashbacks of Zeb’s life growing up in the fictional Seaton, N.C.   This emotional shuffling between the past and present intensifies Zeb’s struggling efforts to rebuild his life.   After his return to Cedar Springs, Zeb works as a condo painter and a fiddler in a traveling country-rock band, dates an artist named Jenny, and tries to reconnect with his family.   His family members are also plagued by the loss of their father and the stress experienced by a younger brother who is a Vietnam vet.   Zeb begins to find peace (or at least patience) when he buys the property surrounding his father’s old house and begins to renovate the structure and farm the land.

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

Posted: October 29th, 2009 under 2000-, 2006, March, Stephen, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Piedmont.
Comments: none

Dorothy Borden is the much-loved daughter of Granston’s first African American lawyer. Dorothy went north for her education, but after a failed marriage she comes back home.  If her first marriage was a mistake, her second marriage is a disaster.  Joe Cephus Divine is the town’s first black police officer.  Joe is a proud but angry man.  To improve his status, Joe plans to marry an educated woman, preferably a school teacher.  Dorothy is a college professor, and she soon flees his abuse.  When Joe marries again, the shoe is on the other foot.  Johnnye Jamison, a school teacher from Pennsylvania, may feign interest in the men who pursue her, but for her marriage is just the route to a man’s money.  With drugs supplied by a lover elsewhere, Johnnye kills off her husbands.  Years later when Dorothy returns to Granston, she learns what happened to Joe and she comes to terms with her own choices and the town she grew up in.

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

Posted: October 29th, 2009 under 2000-, 2006, Bowen, Sandra E., Novels Set in Fictional Places, Piedmont.
Comments: none

Alma Curtis is a bit of a busybody, but she is also a loyal member of King’s Chapel, an historic African-American church in Lovette, North Carolina.  Arriving early to make the final preparations for the church’s 100th anniversary service, she is shocked to hear her pastor, Jonathan Pierce, being threatened by Myron King, the great-grandson of the church’s founder. Winston Beckana is a relative newcomer to the church, but when the church secretary asks Winston, a retired computer expert, to look at the church’s financial records, he can see that something is wrong.  Pastor Pierce knows that something is wrong–his wife is addicted to cocaine and her addiction has put the pastor under King’s thumb. The Pierces know that the situation can’t go on, but when Winston Beckana is murdered, they realize that others in their community have been hurt by their weaknesses.

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

Posted: October 26th, 2009 under 2000-, 2007, McFarland, Shirlita K., Novels Set in Fictional Places, Piedmont.
Comments: none

Being a bit of a softy gets Eleanor Swift in trouble. When her delivery driver calls in “sick” Eleanor think she can handle A Slice of Delight’s deliveries herself that night.  Her one late night delivery is to the home of Richard Olsen, someone whose advances she very publicly rebuffed at her town’s most recent harvest festival.  Pizza in hand, Eleanor looks in through Richard’s front door, only to see that someone has stabbed him with a large kitchen knife.

The image of Eleanor juggling her cell phone and the pizza box is a great start to this light-hearted mystery.  Because of that incident at the festival, Eleanor is suspected of the murder by the police chief, who happens to be her high school beau.  When public opinion, as measured by sales at her pizzeria, seems to turn against her, Eleanor enlists her sister Maddy to help her investigate the crime.  Along the way, the reader gets introduced to a town full of characters.

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

Posted: October 23rd, 2009 under 2000-, 2009, Cavender, Chris, Mountains, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places.
Comments: none

Asheville is called Furmville in this novel, but readers will recognize the Asheville of the early twentieth century.  The city is a haven for tuberculosis patient from all along the eastern seaboard.  One of these patients, Miss Fulton, has been accompanied by her older sister, Mrs. Withers, a beautiful and fairly well-to-do woman.  As the novel opens, the younger woman finds her older sister dead in the living room of the bungalow they share. Mrs. Withers has been strangled and her jewels have been stolen.  Has she been murdered by a stranger or someone in her circle?  Police chief Greenleaf is aided in his investigations by an Atlanta detective who is recuperating in Furmville.  Their conversations move the investigation forward; those conversations also reveal the racial and social attitudes of the period.

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

Posted: October 23rd, 2009 under 1910-1919, 1919, Buncombe, Hay, James, Mountains, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places.
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