As an expert in abnormal psychology working for the FBI, Dr. Alex Cross is used to calmly solving gruesome crimes, but in Kiss the Girls the case is personal.  His niece–a law student at Duke–is kidnapped while on campus, and he comes to the Triangle to try to help find her.  The North Carolina police and FBI are dealing with “Cassanova,” a man who is collecting beautiful and talented female victims.  There is also a second predator on the loose, a killer on the west coast with the nickname “The Gentleman Caller.”  A break in the case comes when one of Cassanova’s victims, a UNC med student, fights her way free of her captor.  This is the second book in the Alex Cross thriller series and the only one set in North Carolina.  It inspired a 1997 film of the same name starring Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd.

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

Posted: May 6th, 2009 under 1990-1999, 1995, Durham, Historical, Novels in Series, Orange, Patterson, James, Piedmont, Suspense/Thriller.
Comments: 2

Ten year-old Maythorn Mullins disappeared on Halloween in 1986. After nineteen years of trying to forget all about the incident, UNC professor Rosemary Goodweather has returned home and is determined to find out what happened to her childhood best friend. Her mother Elizabeth helps with the investigation, worries about her daughter, and tries to figure out her maybe-romance with former detective Phillip Hawkins. Old Wounds is the third of the Elizabeth Goodweather Appalachian mysteries.

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

Posted: January 14th, 2009 under 2000-, 2007, Lane, Vicki, Mountains, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series.
Comments: none

This first novel is a coming of age tale, told in the first person.  Anna is brought up in a strict religious family near the North Carolina coast.  She absorbs most of the lessons of her upbringing, but her family rejects her when she begins dating a Native American student while at UNC-Chapel Hill.  Cut loose from her parents, Anna drifts into drinking and then a disastrous marriage.  Her teaching career provides her with the opportunity to leave this country for Thailand where she finds inner peace through self-acceptance and forgiveness.

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

Posted: November 26th, 2008 under 2000-, 2007, Coast, Ferrell, Autumn, Religious/Inspirational.
Comments: none

The large antebellum plantations of the St. Kilda Valley provide the setting for this lush, nostalgic novel of horse racing, fox hunting, and other aristocratic pursuits. The main character, Philip Eustace, lives the good life at home and abroad in Europe. After attending the university, he marries his childhood sweetheart and their extended wedding celebration closes the novel. The setting is thought to be the St. John community in Hertford County. The author intended the novel to be “a faithful picture of our lost civilization.”

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

Posted: July 17th, 2008 under 1880-1889, 1881, Coastal Plain, Hertford, Moore, John W., Novels to Read Online.
Comments: none

In this novel set amidst the Civil Rights protests of the early 1960s, Beryl Rosinsky has graduated from high school and is anxious to get away from her activist mother and her hometown of Washington, D.C. She enrolls at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she finds a different world — conservative, Southern, and with long-standing campus cliques firmly established. Beryl is gradually drawn into local Civil Rights protests, which are may be based on actual demonstrations by UNC students against segregated businesses in Chapel Hill. As a result of her own political awakening, Beryl ends up with a deeper understanding and appreciation of her mother.

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

Posted: March 13th, 2008 under 1990-1999, 1997, Bache, Ellyn, Orange, Piedmont.
Comments: none