Just outside of Marion (a town that might be Lumberton, Hamlet, or Rockingham), a farmer is murdered.  A young African American man is accused of the killing, but newspaperman Sandy Martin thinks he is innocent. The murder itself is gruesome, but what Martin uncovers during his investigation is worse: political corruption, personal betrayals, witchcraft. This is a dark picture of a small southern town in the last days of one party rule and Jim Crow.

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

Posted: August 1st, 2009 under 1950-1959, 1957, Coastal Plain, Mystery, Wicker, Tom.
Comments: none

The second book in the Fat City mystery series opens with Durham TV reporter Kate Gallagher enjoying both personal and professional success, but once again struggling with her weight. In order to win her diet battle, she signs up for a boot-camp style fitness program run by an old friend in the mountains. When her young roommate is found dead on the obstacle course, Kate finds out that this is not the first death at the camp and starts investigating.

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

Posted: April 16th, 2009 under 2000-, 2008, Durham, Humor, Lilley, Kathryn, Mountains, Mystery, Novels in Series, Piedmont.
Comments: none

After being laid off from her Boston-based TV producer job, Kate Gallagher dreams of becoming an on-air investigative reporter. To do so she needs to lose some weight, so she uses her severance pay as a down-payment for a 12-week weight-loss program at the Hoffman Clinic in Durham. She also agrees to produce a story about her transformation for the local news to pay for the balance. Within 24 hours of arriving in the “Diet Capital of the World,” Kate finds the dead body of the clinic’s founder and she starts using her investigative skills to find the killer. This is the first book in Kathryn Lilley’s Fat City mystery series.

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

Posted: March 5th, 2009 under 2000-, 2007, Durham, Humor, Lilley, Kathryn, Mystery, Novels in Series, Piedmont.
Comments: none

Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan is caught in the middle of an outlaw biker gang-war in Deadly Decisions, the fourth book in Reich’s series of mysteries. While investigating the deaths of both bikers and innocents caught in their crossfire, Tempe finds a connection to a North Carolina teenager’s death in 1984. In the midst of her investigation she also has to deal with three very different men: a sleazy TV reporter who keeps hanging around, her cop boyfriend who has been arrested for dealing in drugs and stolen property, and her 19-year-old nephew who is fascinated by all things motorcycle-related.

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

Posted: January 26th, 2009 under 2000, 2000-, Mystery, Novels in Series, Piedmont, Reichs, Kathy, Suspense/Thriller, Wake.
Comments: none

Most of the action in this novel takes places outside of North Carolina. Through the generosity of a journalist-adventurer Bernard Lysle, Cecil Churchill gets to leave her family’s plantation and travel to Europe and the Middle East. Lysle is smitten with Miss Churchill, but she is too dazzled by the interesting sights and people and her new freedom to take notice of his love. Only when she becomes engaged to someone else does she realize what Lysle has to offer.

Check this title’s availability and access an online copy through the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Posted: January 5th, 2009 under 1880-1889, 1887, Novels to Read Online, Reid, Christian, Romance/Relationship.
Comments: none

When a hurricane blows through town it knocks the steeple off the roof of the Glory Community Church and onto a Storm Channel broadcast van. The weather reporter and camera man inside are injured and one town resident is killed. Town officials blame the church’s administrator, Ann Trask, both because she was in charge of the building and because an incident in her past seems to demonstrate a lack of good judgment under pressure. However, it may be that the victim succumbed to murder rather than the storm. As Ann and camera man Sean Miller try to solve the mystery, they find romance and Ann rediscovers parts of her faith. This is the third of the the Benreys’ series of books set in the fictional Glory, NC, all three of which are part of Steeple Hill Books’ larger “Love Inspired Suspense” series.

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

Posted: December 8th, 2008 under 2008, Benrey, Janet and Ron, Religious/Inspirational, Romance/Relationship, Suspense/Thriller.
Comments: none

In the summer of 1966 Patricia Randal flees an abusive marriage and returns to Roanoke Island.  There she works as a journalist and gets to know a wide rage of folks–longtime residents, fishermen, summer people, cast members of The Lost Colony.  Unfortunately, 1966 is no summer of love for the Outer Banks.  A police officer preys on women driving late at night, racial tensions are increasing, and the conflicts between year-round residents and summer people seem sharper than in years past.  When the son of a local family is killed in Vietnam, protests reflecting unhappiness with the war and the racial status quo unsettle the locals.  Patricia’s decision to share her house with Karen Godwin, the daughter of a United States senator, exposes them both to new temptations and dangers. By the summer’s end, Patricia will come to terms with her past and set herself on the road to a full life, but for others the summer will bring only heartache and destruction.

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

Posted: November 19th, 2008 under 2000-, 2007, Coast, Dare, Pendleton, James, Piedmont.
Comments: 2

If your friend was recovering from breast cancer and sexual betrayal, would you offer her quiet time in a cabin where a murder might have taken place? What was Belle Carson thinking?!? She clearly wasn’t expecting her friend Mia to get interested in that old murder, the one that had caused so much pain to Belle’s family. But once Mia finds the diary of Belle’s grandmother, the accused murderer, she begins to ask questions and poke around in the library and in town, trying to uncover the truth about the accusations against Kate Watkins. Kate was not a murderer, but a proud, confident journalist and fly-fisher. Drawing strength from Kate’s life, Mia puts hers back together.

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

Posted: October 27th, 2008 under 2000-, 2008, Buncombe, Coast, Monroe, Mary Alice, Mountains, Novels in Series, Romance/Relationship.
Comments: none

When a local environmentalist and a real estate agent die in a blaze at a new shorefront McMansion, everyone suspects that a militant environmental group has committed the arson. Kate Dennison is new to Wilmington and as she covers the story for the Winslow Beach Beacon she begins to attract unwanted attention.  Threatening messages and a dead rat left on her desk are preludes to more dangerous actions.  Kate has to balance her work with her responsibilities as a single mom.  A rekindled romance also complicates matters. Can Kate keep herself and her daughter safe while probing into an shadowy environmental group and a developer who may not be all that he seems?

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

Posted: October 20th, 2008 under 2000-, 2008, Coast, Mystery, New Hanover, Nichols, Judy.
Comments: none

Mr. Pendleton must have read the Bard of Avon because this book has many of the elements of a Shakespeare play: mistaken identity, confused lovers, a kidnapping, a child rescued from danger and raised by guardians. As a toddler, Corona is saved from death by the mountaineer Gideon McLeod. She grows up, happy, with the McLeod family in Lonely Cove until a journalist who’s touring the mountains plays with her heart and spreads lies about the family. One consequence of the journalist’s visit is that the botanist Edward Darnell hears about the flora, fauna, and family in Lonely Cove. Darnell, who was also adopted, is taken with Corona. As the plot unfolds, they find that they have much in common.

Check this title’s availability and access an online copy through the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Posted: October 9th, 2008 under 1890-1899, 1895, Macon, Mountains, Novels to Read Online, Pendleton, Louis.
Comments: none