A new college basketball season is just around the corner, so it’s an appropriate time to add this novel to your reading list.

Mickey Barton was the captain of his high school basketball team–a team that won the state championship and a national invitational tournament.  That should make him a hot prospect for the premier basketball colleges in his state.  But Mickey has a problem–he is only 5′ 6″.  The big time schools rebuff him, and his best friend and teammate 6′ 10″ Hub Duncan trades his friendship with Mickey for a chance to play for an elite coach.  Mickey, whose dad is dead, needs a scholarship to attend college.  Luckily, his high school coach becomes the basketball coach at Greyling Tech, the perennial cellar dweller in the conference.  Mickey joins Coach Royce there.  Despite the ragtag nature of the team and bad behavior by the coach’s son, they go on to glory.

Mickey’s college, Grayling Tech, is thought to be Wake Forest, but I could not identify any of the schools in the conference.

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

Posted: October 19th, 2009 under 1950-1959, 1952, Children & Young Adults, Leonard, Burgess.
Comments: none

Webster (Web) Daniels’ life is a little down in the dumps lately; everything, from his advertising job to his golf game is a bit off. When the newest hire at Hay/Biggs/Pender Advertising, Richards Thomas III, is about to land the huge $20 million account of Ichi-ban Golf, Web finds himself employing the help of a new found ‘friend’ and his special golf balls. Aristotle Mann recently joined Web’s country club as the new golf pro. Aristotle brings with him some unique teaching tools, most of all golf balls that assure the player a par for the course. Once the rivalry between Web and Richards inevitably boils over, everything is left to the outcome of a winner-takes-all game of golf. Web requests the assistance of Aristotle and his magic golf balls to tip the odds in his favor. Of course this type of golf ball does not come at a small price: Web soon learns just how much his win will cost. It seems this time the Devil stopped off in Charlotte on his way down to Georgia.

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

Posted: July 2nd, 2009 under 2000-, 2008, Humor, Mecklenburg, Piedmont, Thompson, Wille.
Comments: none

At the opening of Southern Fatality, Jersey Barnes retires from the day-to-day business of her security firm to concentrate on her other Wilmington business, a pub called the Barter’s Block. She has plans for living a (more) quiet life and maybe even marrying her boyfriend, a model named Bill. When Bill asks her to use her security expertise to help an old friend catch her cheating husband, she reluctantly agrees and quickly finds herself caught up in a case that involves computer crimes, kidnapping, huge amounts of money, and murder. Along for the ride are Jersey’s business partner Ox, her dog Cracker, her pill-trading, poker-playing father, and a computer hacker named Soup.

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

Posted: November 6th, 2008 under 2000-, 2007, Coast, Humor, Mystery, New Hanover, Novels in Series, Ocean, T. Lynn, Romance/Relationship.
Comments: none

Don’t you love it when a country boy makes good? Ricky Smith was nothing special in his hometown of Slippery Rock, North Carolina. One night in Las Vegas changed all that. After jumping from the balcony of a burning hotel, Ricky begins to burn up blackjack, roulette, and crap tables all along The Strip. Investigator Tony Valentine is hired by casino owners to discover the reason for Ricky’s incredible luck. Valentine follows Ricky back to Slippery Rock where he finds it’s hard for an ex-cop from New Jersey to blend in. It turns out that Ricky is not the only guy from Slippery Rock who has hit the big time, and Valentine is up against bigger challenges and greater dangers than he ever thought one little town could spawn.

This is the fifth Tony Valentine book; it is the only one set in North Carolina.

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

Posted: August 29th, 2008 under 2000-, 2005, Mountains, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Suspense/Thriller, Swain, James.
Comments: none

Drops of the Night, a North Carolina novel set in 1988, is the story of Nora Lynch, a childless farmer’s wife who faces her husband’s jealous rages and intentions to sell the family farm – a plan that threatens the only lifestyle Nora has known. She also confronts a growing attachment to a stranger who enters her life through her husband’s gambling. Drops of the Night is set in fictional Milton, based on Marion in McDowell County (not to be confused with the real Milton, N.C., which is in Caswell County).

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

Posted: April 14th, 2008 under 2000-, 2006, Duncan, Julia Nunnally, McDowell, Mountains, Novels Set in Fictional Places.
Comments: none

In the mountains of western North Carolina in the 1880s, moonshining and cockfighting are a regular part of the rough-and-tumble life. Webb Darling, the self-proclaimed king of the moonshiners, rules the region from his hilltop cabin. In contrast to the cruel and conniving Darling is a former slave named Hamby McFee who dreams of making enough money to escape from his life in the mountains, where he still farms the same land he worked as a slave. Unfortunately, the only chance Hamby has at making enough money to leave may be to win it from Darling.

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

Posted: March 13th, 2008 under 2000-, 2002, Coast, Historical, Mountains, Piedmont, Price, Charles.
Comments: none

Set in the North Carolina mountains in the 1920s, This Rock continues to explore the themes and setting used by Morgan in his popular 2000 novel Gap Creek. The story follows the young brothers Muir and Moody Powell. Muir is earnestly committed to becoming a preacher, but finds his attempts at spreading the word frustrated by his older brother, who is much more interesting in running moonshine and gambling. As Muir struggles to understand his faith, the boys’ mother fights to keep the family together in the still raw wilderness in which they live.

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

Posted: March 13th, 2008 under 2000-, 2002, Historical, Morgan, Robert, Mountains.
Comments: none