Category Archives: 1993

1993

by Jenny McElroy | April 28, 2009

Margaret Maron. Southern Discomfort. New York : Mysterious Press, 1993.

When she was running for the open district judge position in Colleton County, Deborah Knott commented to a meeting of the local WomanAid group that she wished she could take time out of campaigning to help with their work. Now that she has been appointed to the seat, the group has come to claim her weekends and she starts working with a group of women building a house for a needy single mom and her kids. On top of her new duties and the construction project, the new judge also faces violence in her community and in her family. Before the house is finished, the group’s electrician (who also happens to be Deborah’s niece) is attacked, the accused attacker is found dead, and the girl’s father is poisoned. This is the second in the series of Judge Deborah Knott mysteries.

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

Toni L.P. Kelner. Down Home Murder. New York: Kensington Pub., 1993.

Laura Fleming left North Carolina years ago to attend MIT, but is summoned back to her western North Carolina hometown when her grandfather is badly injured in an accident at the town’s mill. But was her Paw’s “accident” really an attempt on his life? Laura (or Laurie Ann, as her family calls her) sees connections between his case and the murder of a local woman. Although she has her hands full investigating the incident, she also has to deal with a slew of her kooky relatives. This is the first of the Laura Fleming Mysteries, all of which are set in the fictional town of Byerly.

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

Donald Secreast. White Trash, Red Velvet. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.

Although it technically consists of short stories, White Trash, Red Velvet can be read as a novel. When taken as a whole, the book tells the story of Curtis and Adele Holsclaw, their three children, and their friends and relatives in the fictional town of Hibriten (likely based on Lenoir, NC). The first story takes place in 1952 and the other eleven follow the family and town through several decades of blue-collar southern life.

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

Comments Off

Filed under 1990-1999, 1993, Caldwell, Mountains, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Seacrest, Donald

Tagged as Families

by Jenny McElroy | March 13, 2008

Bland Simpson. The Mystery of Beautiful Nell Cropsey. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.

As far as anyone knew, the last person to see Nell Cropsey alive was her boyfriend Jim Wilcox, who left her crying on her front porch in November 1901 after he ended their relationship. The people of Elizabeth City, N.C. looked desperately for the young woman, relying on bloodhounds and even psychics in a search that brought national attention to the small town. Nell’s body was finally found floating in the Pasquotank River, a few weeks after she disappeared. Jim Wilcox was accused of the murder, even thought the evidence against him was only circumstantial and he hotly proclaimed his innocence. In this “nonfiction novel,” Simpson dramatizes the true story of Nell Cropsey with the touch of a novelist, relying on first- person narrators and period details to give an intimate look at small-town eastern North Carolina at the dawn of the twentieth century.

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

1 Comment

Filed under 1990-1999, 1993, Coastal Plain, Docufiction, Historical, Pasquotank, Simpson, Bland

by Jenny McElroy | March 13, 2008

Michael Parker. Hello Down There. New York: Scribners, 1993.

Edwin Keene has become something of a recluse after a tragic car accident in which one of the passengers was killed. The aristocratic Keene, son of a prominent local family, eases the pain of his own injuries with too-frequent doses of morphine. As his life appears to be slipping away, there is a sudden hope for redemption when Keene falls for Eureka Spaight, a local high-school girl whose working-class family is very different from his own. The novel is set in the early 1950s in the fictional eastern North Carolina town of Trent.

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

Category Archives: 1993

Margaret Maron. Southern Discomfort. New York : Mysterious Press, 1993.

Toni L.P. Kelner. Down Home Murder. New York: Kensington Pub., 1993.

Donald Secreast. White Trash, Red Velvet. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.

Bland Simpson. The Mystery of Beautiful Nell Cropsey. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.

Michael Parker. Hello Down There. New York: Scribners, 1993.

Tags

Archives

Meta