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

Although Katie and Mayme are only teenagers, they are trying to run the Rosewood Plantation on their own and convince everyone in the nearby town of Greens Crossing that nothing is amiss. Under their watch, Rosewood becomes a sanctuary for several other young women in trouble, including a girl whose mother died when she and her daughter were fleeing her abusive husband, and an ex-slave who is hiding herself and her new baby from a cruel former master. Throughout the novel the four girls struggle to survive, keep one step ahead of those who would harm them, and find a way to pay the bank loans against the property. A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton is the the second book of the historical, faith-based Shenandoah Sisters series.

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

Posted: June 19th, 2009 under 2000-, 2003, Historical, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series, Phillips, Michael, Piedmont, Religious/Inspirational.
Comments: none

Trapeze artist Frankie is the young, orphaned star of the Doub Circus. When Frankie’s parents died they left her in the care of the circus owner and he and the other performers became her family. That Frankie is African American does not matter to them, but since she can pass as white, it is kept a secret in order to avoid controversy. On the circus’s first trip into the South, Frankie’s background is revealed and she is taken from the circus by members of the Granston, NC community. She is placed in an orphanage but after standing up for herself to a cruel authority figure, she is moved to a reform school. Eventually she is adopted, renamed Thomasena, and allowed to finish growing up outside institutions, but it is more than six years before she is free to leave Granston again.

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

Posted: June 17th, 2009 under 2000, 2000-, Bowen, Sandra E., Historical, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Piedmont.
Comments: none

Kenya and Maurice were high school and college sweethearts, but they broke up after she caught him in bed with another woman. Now, nine years later, Maurice is the star player for the Super Bowl-winning Carolina Panthers and Kenya is a successful lawyer in Atlanta. When Maurice’s cheating, gold-digging fiancee leaves him at the altar, he heads to the Bahamas with his brother to escape the media. Coincidentally, Kenya is at the same resort, celebrating her promotion and her upcoming move back to North Carolina. The two reconnect while on vacation, but things are much more uncertain when they return to Charlotte.  It seems that after their respective experiences, Kenya can’t trust Maurice and Maurice is having trouble trusting any woman.

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

Posted: June 11th, 2009 under 2000-, 2008, Mecklenburg, 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

The teenage years are hard for everyone, but they are especially tough for Elisa Matthews.  Her family is comfortably middle class, she has good grades, and she has dreams for future.  These things set her apart from many of the other African American teens in her small home town. When her best friend, Rachel, joins the clique that calls her an “Oreo”, Elisa  starts to feel that she doesn’t have a friend in the world. But she does. Jen has had Elisa’s back when the clique has mocked her, but when Elisa starts spending time with a new boy, Scott, it’s Jen who feels vulnerable.  The novel is in Elisa’s voice; the technique nicely captures her thought processes and her growth.

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

Posted: May 8th, 2009 under 2000-, 2003, Children & Young Adults, Coastal Plain, Rountree, Wendy Alexia.
Comments: none

It’s easy to loose faith in yourself and faith in God’s goodness when your marriage breaks up.  When Yvonne Fountain Copeland’s husband of fifteen years leaves her for no good reason, Yvonne is shattered.  Yvonne takes her two daughters from Richmond and moves back to her hometown of Durham.  There she finds a nurturing family, a mixed community of sinners and faith-filled people, and the handsome Curtis Parker.  Coach Parker is the successful basketball coach at a local university.  As Yvonne and Curtis fall in love they also come to realize that they need to give God a more central place in their lives.

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

Posted: April 26th, 2009 under 2000-, 2009, Bowen, Michele Andrea, Durham, Piedmont, Religious/Inspirational, Romance/Relationship.
Comments: none

Time’s Witness is narrated by Cuddy Mangum, formerly a homocide detective and now the Chief of Police for the Piedmont town of Hillston. By his own admission Cuddy doesn’t have the best thing one can have in Hillston (class), or even the second best thing (looks). What he does have are brains and he makes use of them in this, the second of the Justin and Cuddy mysteries. With a young African-American man’s execution on the horizon, racial tensions rise in the town and things only get worse when the convict’s brother is murdered. Then a candidate for governor becomes involved and starts receiving death threats. Complicating matters is the fact that the politician’s wife is Cuddy’s first–and perhaps only real–love.

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

Posted: March 24th, 2009 under 1980-1989, 1989, Malone, Michael, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series, Piedmont.
Comments: none

Katie Clairborne and Mary Ann (Mayme) Jukes were born in the same county less than a year apart, but they did not meet until the Civil War brought tragedy to both their lives. Mayme, a slave on a plantation outside the fictional Greens Crossing, is the lone survivor of an attack by marauding Confederate deserters. She flees and eventually finds herself at Rosewood, the plantation owned by the Clairbornes. Unfortunately, the same gang attacked Rosewood and everyone is dead except Katie. The girls decide to run the plantation and keep the deaths a secret to protect Katie’s claim on the land. They form a strong bond and, through toil and faith, they survive together. This is the first book in the Shenandoah Sisters series of historical, faith-based novels.

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

Posted: March 10th, 2009 under 2000-, 2003, Historical, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series, Phillips, Michael, Religious/Inspirational.
Comments: none