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March 2007 Terry Hoover. Double Dead. Waterville, ME: Five Star, 2007. Double Dead is the first in an anticipated mystery series from Charlotte native, Terry Hoover. Former reporter Steve Harlan has been hired by a defense attorney to work as a private investigator on the murder of a bank executive's mistress. Set in Charlotte in the early 1960s, the story is rich with references to local culture and landmarks.
Patricia Rice. Small Town Girl. New York: Ivy Books, 2006. Flynn "Flint" Clinton returns home to the fictional Piedmont town of North Fork, North Carolina after leaving his music career and fast lifestyle behind in Nashville. Looking to start a new life, he finds himself captivated by Joella Sanderson, a waitress at the restaurant he owns. Joella brings music and love back into Flint's life, yet he is still not without his share of troubles.
Patricia Rice. Sweet Home Carolina. New York: Ballantine Books, 2007. When the textile mill in the fictional Piedmont town of North Fork, North Carolina goes bankrupt, Amy Warren is determined to reopen the mill and reinstate jobs for the people in her town. But Zack St. Etienne, a successful European buinessman, arrives in Norfolk with other plans for the mill. Upset by the obstruction of her goal, Amy must also come to terms with the romance that develops with Zack.
Ann B. Ross. Miss Julia Strikes Back. New York: Viking, 2007.
Sarah Shaber. Shell Game. New York: St. Martin's, 2007.
Lynn York. The Sweet Life. New York: Plume, 2007. This sequel to York's The Piano Teacher continues eight years after Wilma's late-in-life marriage to Roy Swann. The couple's quiet lifestyle begins to pick up when Wilma's granddaughter, Star, and her father, Harper, come to visit the charming fictional mountain town of Swan's Knob. Harper plans a large bluegrass festival on Roy's farm, which overwhelms his hosts and forces them to confront new challenges as a family.
Deborah Homsher. The Rising Shore -- Roanoke. Blue Hull Press, 2007. The Rising Shore -- Roanoke, a historical novel, tells the story of the Lost Colony through the voices of two pioneering women. Elenor Dare is daughter of the expedition's leader and mother of the first English child born in North America. Margaret Lawrence is her servant. As members of the earliest English venture to colonize the North America (1587), they sail from London, cross the Atlantic, and settle on Roanoke Island. Elenor longs to explore and paint pictures of Virginia, as her father has done. Margaret blazes her own path to independence. Both women are sometimes frustrated by circumstance and tradition, but they move boldly, angling against one another, to discover and accomplish their dreams.
February 2007 Howard Owen. Rock of Ages. Sag Harbor, NY: The Permanent Press, 2006. The story of Littlejohn McCain continues in this sequel to Owen's Littlejohn (1992). Georgia, Littlejohn's granddaughter, returns from New Jersey to her hometown in the fictional town of East Geddie, North Carolina. East Geddie, "where strawberries had grown and no tobacco was ever planted," located in the sand hills of Scots County (Scotland County), greets Georgia with flashbacks from her past life on the farm, a family murder mystery to solve, and the prospect of true love.
Charles Frazier. Thirteen Moons. New York: Random House, 2006. Loosely based on the life of frontiersman William Holland Thomas, narrator Will Cooper provides a detailed picture of life in western North Carolin in the early nineteenth-century. After working as a "bound boy" at a "trade post at the edge of the Nation," Will is adopted by a Cherokee elder, Bear. Will eventually leads the clan as a white Indian chief and colonel for the Confederacy. Still haunted by the memory of his one true love, Claire, Will escapes solitude through his travels.
Walt Larimore. The Bryson City Series. Bryson City Tales. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002. Bryson City Seasons. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004. Bryson City Secrets. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006. Based on the experiences of the author as a young physician, these stories describe the humor, heartache, and warmth shared in a rural medical practice in Bryson City, N.C. The characters in these stories do not hesitate to share their learned country wisdom, teaching the young doctor the kinds of lessons that were not taught in medical school.
November 2006 Joyce Moyer Hostetter. Blue. Honesdale, Penn.: Boyds Mills Press, 2006. In this book for younger readers, thirteen year old narrator Ann Fay Honeycutt describes life in Hickory during World War II. When she is stricken with polio, Honeycutt is hospitalized and becomes close friends with another patient, an African American girl her age. The novel is based on the true story of a hospital for polio patients in Hickory in the 1940s.
Deborah Smith. Crossroads Cafe. New York: BelleBooks, 2006. When a car crash injures actress Cathy Deen, her career in Hollywood is over. She returns to her hometown in the North Carolina mountains where she finds solace in familiar faces and rituals, and in a new addition to the community, a man who has recently moved there to recover from emotional scars of his own.
Joanna Catherine Scott. The Road from Chapel Hill. New York: Penguin, 2006. This Civil War novel follows the intertwining stories of a young woman from an elite Wilmington family, a runaway slave, and a dirt-farmer's son.
Michele Andrea Bowen. Holy Ghost Corner. New York: Warner, 2006. Theresa Hopson is the proprietress of Miss Thang's Holy Ghost Corner and Church Women's Boutique
in Durham. When a developer threatens to turn the property containing Theresa's store into expensive
condominiums, she enlists the help of her friends and church members to save their neighborhood.
Susan S. Kelly. The Last of Something. New York: Pegasus, 2006. Twenty years after they met in college, three women gather for a reunion in the fictional coastal town of Dune Ridge. While they wait for their husbands to arrive, and keep their eye on an approaching hurricane, they tell old stories and discuss their lives.
September 2006 Joan A. Medlicott. Two Days After the Wedding. New York: Pocket Books, 2006.
Margaret Maron. Winter's Child. New York: Warner Books, 2006.
Lee Smith. On Agate Hill. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2006. Thirteen year old Molly Petree chronicles her life in post-Civil War North Carolina on the plantation Agate Hill, near Hillsborough.
Marisha Pessl. Special Topics in Calamity Physics. New York: Viking, 2006. Teenage narrator Blue Van Meer, daughter of an academic who has bounced from school to school, is spending her senior year of high school in the fictional mountain town of Stockton , N.C. Blue quickly falls in with a group of intelligent classmates with whom she investigates the mysterious drowning of a girl from their school.
August 2006 Vicki Lane. Art's Blood. New York: Dell, 2006. Elizabeth Goodweather, who first appeared in Lane's Signs
in the Blood, is back in another mountain mystery. Elizabeth pursues the case of a murdered local
artist in a story that takes place among the arts community in and around Asheville.
Mariah Stewart. Final Truth. New York: Random House, 2006. Regan Landry is a journalist working on a profile of Lester Ray Barnes, who had just been released from death row after it was learned that he was convicted on faulty evidence. Now, long after Landry begins her profile, Barnes disappears at the same time a string of grisly crimes are committed on the Outer Banks. Landry teams up with an FBI officer and they travel to the North Carolina coast to investigate.
Jane Tesh. A Case of Imagination. Scottsdale, Ariz.: Poisoned Pen Press, 2006. Madeline Maclin is the former Miss Parkland in the fictional Piedmont town of Parkland, N.C. She has just opened a detective agency and is having a hard time getting people to take her seriously. That changes quickly when a friend and potential love interest inherits a house in nearby (and also fictional) Celosia where Maclin gets mixed up in a local beauty pageant and is soon involved in her first murder investigation.
June 2006 John Hart. The King of Lies. New York: St. Martin's, 2006. When Ezra Pickens is found murdered, there is no shortage of suspects in Salisbury, N.C. The unpopular lawyer made a lot of enemies over his long career and it's left to his son and partner, Jackson, to unravel the mystery.
Diana Gabaldon. The Outlander Series. Drums of Autumn. New York: Delacorte, 1997. The Fiery Cross. New York: Delacorte, 2001. A Breath of Snow and Ashes. New York: Delacorte, 2005. The second trilogy in the popular Outlander series picks up the story of 20th-century time-traveler Claire Randall and her 18th-century Scottish husband Jamie Fraser as they continue their adventures in the American colonies. Largely set in the colony of North Carolina in the 1760s and 1770s, Claire and Jamie must navigate through the political tensions leading up to the American Revolution with the added twist that they know the outcome of the coming war. Rich in historical description, humor, and romance, these books add three more tales to the saga of the Frasers.
J.D. Rhoades. A Good Day in Hell. New York: St. Martin's, 2006. Fayetteville-based bounty hunter Jack Keller returns in this sequel to The Devil's Right Hand. Teamed up with his new girlfriend, a local sheriff's deputy, Keller pursues a couple of murderers across the state.
Ron Rash. The World Made Straight New York: Holt, 2006. Past and present are entertwined in this novel when 17-year-old Travis Shelton begins to investigate his ancestors' role in the 1863 Civil War massacre at Shelton Laurel. Travis has just dropped out of high school and spends most of his time hanging out and reading history with a former teacher in Madison County, N.C. The teacher has turned to selling pot to make a living and needs Travis's help when he gets in over his head with nearby drug dealers.  Mark de Castrique. Foolish Undertaking. Scottsdale, Ariz.: Poisoned Pen Press, 2006. Barry Clayton, a funeral director in fictional Gainesboro, N.C., is back after appearing in de
Castrique's earlier novel, Foolish Undertaking. Clayton's business is thrust into the national
spotlight when the body of a Montagnard man reknowned for helping American soldiers in Vietnam is
stolen. Clayton must deal with the grieving family, angry Vietnam veterans, and powerful politicians
while he pursues the case. J.B. Stanley. A Killer Collection. New York: Penguin, 2006. This first in a new series of "Collectible Mysteries" introduces Molly Appleby, a Hillsborough-based pottery expert. When George-Bradley Staunton, described as "North Carolina's most obnoxious collector" is murdered, Molly is on the case. Her investigations bring her to potters and collectors around the state, including Asheboro, Hendersonville, and Seagrove. Stanley's extensive knowledge of folk pottery is evident throughout the text.
January 2006 Kaye Gibbons. The Life All Around Me By Ellen Foster. New York: Harcourt, 2005. Ellen Foster, returning eight years after the acclaimed novel in which she first appeared, is now fifteen and driven to succeed. She is an excellent student, a budding poet, and is applying for early admission to Harvard. Perhaps more important for readers, she is still a lively and distinctive narrator. This sequel finds Ellen returning to North Carolina and attending the State Fair in Raleigh.
JoAnn Ross. Out of the Mist. New York: Pocket Books, 2003. Lily Stewart is the organizer of the Highland Games, the traditional Scottish festival in western North Carolina. When filmmaker Ian McKenzie arrives in town, Lily believes that he's there to make a documentary, but he may have his sights set instead on a piece of famous antique jewelry that Lily has in her possession. Amidst the excitement of the games and the budding romance between Ian and Lily, several members of the wacky Stewart family arrive on the scene and the story takes off in unusual directions.
Penelope J. Stokes. Circle of Grace. New York: Doubleday, 2004. Four friends have succeeded in keeping a "circle journal" - a diary that is passed from one person to the next - for thirty years. The women are very different from each other, but have remained close friends since meeting in a college philosophy course. When one of the diarists - a resident of Ashevile - is diagnosed with cancer, she makes a confession to the others: she hasn't always told the truth in the journal, letting it reflect her life as she had hoped it would be rather than how it has really turned out. Her candor leads to similar confessions and the four friends are drawn even closer together.
Jude Deveraux. First Impressions. New York: Atria, 2005. After her daughter's wedding, Eden Palmer begins to think about making changes in her own life. She leaves New York for Arundel, N.C., a fictional town in eastern North Carolina, to take over a charming old house she has inherited. Eden begins spending time with two different men -- a local lawyer who is one of the town's most eligible bachelors and a rugged, mysterious man who is also a newcomer to the town. Eden finds that it's difficult to start over, especially when events from her past keep coming back to haunt her.
Charles Price. Where the Water-Dogs Laughed: The Story of the Great Bear. Boone, N.C.: High Country Publishers, 2003. This is the fourth novel in a series of loosely-tied books based in the North Carolina mountains. Set in the early twentieth century, Where the Water-Dogs Laughed follows George Weatherby, a northern logging executive who has moved to North Carolina to exploit the state's rich timber resources. Weatherby hires and befriends Absalom Middleton, a local man, and charges himself with reforming the rough-hewn Middleton. One of the key characters of the book is Yan-e'gwa, a large bear which is the subject of Cherokee legend.
December 2005 Joan A. Medlicott. A Covington Christmas. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005. A Covington Christmas is the latest volume in Medlicott's Covington series.
November 2005 Dewey Lambdin. What Lies Buried: A Novel of Old Cape Fear. Ithaca, N.Y.: McBooks Press, 2005. This historical novel, set in and around 18th-century Wilmington, traces the events around the murder of political leader Harry Tresmayne.
Jan Karon. Light from Heaven. New York: Viking, 2005. Light from Heaven is the latest volume in Karon's Mitford series.
Lynne Hinton. The Arms of God. New York: St. Martins, 2005. Olivia Jacobs's life takes a dramatic turn when her mother, who had abandoned her as a toddler decades before, shows up at her front door. There isn't much time for catching up, as Olivia's mother dies only a few weeks later. The sudden reunion has rekindled Olivia's memories of her childhood in the poor, fictional community of Smoketown, N.C., outside of Greensboro.
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