Category Archives: Land, Dixie

Dixie Land. Return to Serenity. Kernersville, NC: Alabaster Books, 2007.

Maggie and Ross Harrington, the main characters in Land’s previous novel, Serenity, are back in this sequel, Return to Serenity.  Maggie and Ross are now married, and they are raising Maggie’s son, Tyler, as their child even though Tyler’s father is Maggie’s dishonest, drug-abusing ex-fiancé, Michael.  Maggie and Ross are happy–they have become a true family and the network of friends evident in the first novel are present in this one too.  Because friends Caroline and Charlie are willing to mind little Tyler, Maggie and Ross are able to slip away for a romantic vacation in the Caribbean.

That vacation is Maggie and Ross’s last moment of bliss before problems from the past come back for another assault on the couple. Ross’s ex-wife Melanie has cancer, and she asks Ross and Maggie to take in her daughter (who is not Ross’s child).  Melanie’s request opens old wounds, but Melanie is not a threatening or frightening person, as is Tyler’s father, Michael.  Michael will stop at nothing to get Maggie and Tyler back. As in the past, Michael manipulates Maggie’s friends to get information on her, and while he appears to be using the courts to get Tyler, that is just a way to distract Maggie while he puts his true plan in motion.

 

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2007, Coastal Plain, Land, Dixie, Suspense/Thriller

Dixie Land. Second Chances. Kernersville, NC: Alabaster Books, 2006.

Grace Garrett is thrown for a loop when she stops by her husband’s law office one night and finds an office assistant, half-dressed, on his desk. Can it be that her husband of twenty-plus years has been carrying on with this young woman?  When the woman is murdered, Grace is not the only one who wants an answer to this question.

Second Chances follows Grace as she attempts to juggle her responsibilities as a mother, daughter, wife, and friend with her investigations into her husband’s life and the history of the dead woman.  There are many twists and turns before Grace learns the full story and builds a new life for herself off the foundations of her years as Mrs. Andrew Garrett.

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

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Filed under 2000, 2006, Forsyth, Land, Dixie, Mystery, Piedmont

Dixie Land. Serenity. Kernersville, NC: Alabaster Books, 2003.

After she finds her fiancé with another woman, Maggie Thornton decides to bail out of the life she’s been living.  With no specific plans, she packs up her belongings and heads south.  Only because she needs a break, she stops in the little (fictitious) town of Serenity, North Carolina.  The good people of Serenity welcome Maggie, and soon she has a place to stay, a job, friends, and a new love.  But Maggie’s past comes back to threaten her happiness when her ex-fiancé attempts to push his way back into her life, abusing the trusting nature of Maggie’s friends to keep tabs on her and to subvert her new romance.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2003, Coastal Plain, Land, Dixie, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Suspense/Thriller

Dixie Land. Exit Wounds. Kernersville, NC: Alabaster Book Publishing, 2008.

As this novel opens all Lisa York’s worries are minor. Yes, her husband is not a good listener, her mother-in-law is cold, and Lisa would like to loose a few pounds.  But her marriage is strong and their daughters are a joy to Lisa and her husband.  How quickly things change!  Lisa expected that when her daughters entered their teen years, there would be bumps in her relationship with them.  However she is unprepared for her older daughter Melissa’s lies and the girl’s insistence on continuing a relationship with a boy who is clearly young Mr. Wrong.

Lisa expects her husband, Steven, to help pull their daughter back onto the straight-and-narrow path, so her world falls apart when she finds out how far Steven is from his public image as the successful businessman and happy family man.  Steven’s death deepens Lisa’s troubles, in part because the police suspect she had a hand in his murder.  Lisa is able to find a way forward, with support from friends and a new love.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2008, Land, Dixie, Mecklenburg, Piedmont

Dixie Land. Grave Secrets. Kernersville, NC: Alabaster Books, 2008.

Susan Slade grew up feeling secure and loved.  Her parents were attentive and supportive, and Susan had a close relationship with her Aunt Lois and a foster sister, Krystal.  Wes Marshall had been Susan’s boyfriend since high school, and the two seem headed toward marriage.

As Grave Secrets opens, all that is unraveling.  Susan’s father has been dead a year, and her mother has just died.  Susan is beginning to have the same nightmare she had when she was a young girl, a nightmare in which she is a little child, cold and alone in a dark, small space.  Seeking solace, Susan returns to her parents’ house.  There she finds documents that seem to indicate that she was informally adopted–possible bought–by the people she always thought were her parents.  Susan’s first impulse is to ask Aunt Lois what she knows, but when Aunt Lois commits suicide and then Krystal takes a drug overdose, Susan realizes that she must solve this mystery on her own.  Her quest for the truth has consequences for her relationships with Wes and Krystal, but by the end of the novel most of the characters are at peace with the past and ready for a brighter future.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2008, Coast, Land, Dixie, Mystery, Suspense/Thriller

Dixie Land. Deadly Beauty. Kernersville, NC: Alabaster Books, 2010.

Diana thought her troubles were over when Ashley Marsh was sent to a mental hospital at the end of Deadly Company.  Free from Ashley’s threats, Diana is able to build a happy life in Greensboro, North Carolina with her new husband, Lance Cassidy, and his two daughters. The girls, Kelli and Kasey, are lively youngsters.  Kelli, a kindergarten student, becomes instant pals with the teaching assistant in her classroom, Miss Marisa.

Marisa is a warm-hearted but insecure young woman.  She is under the spell of her friend Sara, but Sara has become Marisa’s friend so that she can get close to the girls and take Lance away from Diana.  Yes, Sara is Ashley, and she will not stop until she eliminates her rival and claims Lance as her own.  Ashley manipulates Marisa, Lance, the girls, and even Diana.  Diana and Nora, Lance’s boss, sense that something is off about “Sara”, but it takes evidence from Marisa to bring their fears into focus.

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

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Filed under 2010, 2010-2019, Guilford, Land, Dixie, Piedmont, Suspense/Thriller

Dixie Land. Deadly Company. Kernersville, NC: Alabaster Books, 2009.

There’s a saying, “No good deed goes unpunished.”  That’s certainly the case for Diana Delaney.  After the company accountant shows Diana evidence that the company’s president has been cooking the books, the two women take their evidence to the police.  Before he can be tried for fraud, Frank Weston disappears; it is unclear if he has been murdered or if he has fled.  Diana suspects the later because shortly after Weston disappears, she and the accountant receive threatening phone calls.

The threats prove too much for Diana, so she flies to Greensboro, North Carolina with the idea of staying with her cousin Nora for a few weeks.  Nora has problems too–a close friend has been killed in a car accident, leaving two young daughter and a grieving husband.  Diana is drawn into helping the stricken family, and she puts down roots in Greensboro, working for Nora’s company and living with the dead woman’s sister.  But suddenly Diana begins to receive threats again, and she fears that the person who drove her from Wisconsin will threaten her life in North Carolina.  Diana fears for herself and for the new people in her life whom she has come to love.  Only after Diana is kidnapped does she learn who her true enemy is.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2009, Guilford, Land, Dixie, Mystery, Piedmont