Monthly Archives: November 2009

Inglis Fletcher. Raleigh’s Eden. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1940.

This is the first book in Inglis Fletcher’s series of novels about North Carolina in the 17th and 18th centuries.   This is a big book and it set the pattern for the ones to follow.  While historical events play out in the background (the Regulator Insurrection, the Edenton Tea Party, the Battle of Guilford Courthouse), the main characters struggle with their personal and political passions.  The hero, Adam Rutledge, is a well-born landowner, married to Sara, an invalid.  Mary Warden is attracted to Adam, even as she struggles to stay true to her much older husband.  Into and out of their lives come almost a hundred other characters, some actual historical figures, some fanciful creations of the author’s imagination.  When it was published, this book was compared to Gone with the Wind. Like Margaret Mitchell’s blockbuster, Raleigh’s Eden is a good read, but readers of our era will find some of the situations and the attitudes of some characters objectionable.

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

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Filed under 1940, 1940-1949, Chowan, Coast, Fletcher, Inglis, Historical, Novels in Series, Piedmont

T. Lynn Ocean. Southern Peril. New York: Minotaur Books, 2009.

Why is it that new restaurant owner, Morgan, does not want Jersey’s help after his apartment has been trashed by intruders?  His sister, a state supreme court judge in South Carolina, calls in a favor from Jersey to get Jersey to look into the break-in and her brother’s strange behavior.  Morgan–and his father–have their secrets, but the restaurateurs are not the only ones in Wilmington who have done things they need to hide.  The Drug Enforcement Administration comes to town and their investigation seems to focus on Morgan’s restaurant.  Although one DEA agent catches Jersey’s eye, she has just moved her relationship with Ox to a new level.  As Jersey’s relationship with Ox grows more complicated, Jersey also comes to see her dad in a new light, as he helps her with the case.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2009, Coast, Mystery, New Hanover, Novels in Series, Ocean, T. Lynn

Suzetta Perkins. Déjà Vu. Largo, MD: Strebor Books, 2009.

In Suzetta Perkins’ earlier novel, Behind the Veil,  Margo Myles is betrayed by her closest confidants: her husband of twenty-five years, her long-term next door neighbor, and her very best friend in the world. In  Déjà Vu, Angelica Barnes (Margo’s best friend) is at the center of the drama.  Recently released from prison after being caught up in the “Operation Stingray” that got Margo’s husband into trouble, Angelica is trying to get her life back on track and to mend broken relationships.  However, she finds that making a new life in North Carolina will be too difficult; everyone in Fayetteville knows all about her past.  Angelica decides to move to New York City after being offered a job as a model, but the turmoil from her previous life follows her.  Robert Santiago, the ringleader of the criminal organization Operation Stingray finds her so that she can “repay her debt” to him.  Angelica, her family, and her friends are in danger as Santiago terrorizes and kills those who undid his schemes five years ago.  Angelica hopes that Margo will forgive her and help her, but Margo is struggling to reconnect with her husband who has just been released from prison.  Finally, it takes intervention from an outsider who is not what he appears to be to prevent Santiago from harming more people.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2009, Coastal Plain, Cumberland, Perkins, Suzetta, Suspense/Thriller

E. B. Alston. Hammer Spade and the Case of the Missing Husband. Timberlake, NC: Righter Publishing Co., 2006.

Although he didn’t know it at the time, it was Hammer Spade’s lucky day when Alonia Lockheart walked into his office and asked him to find her missing husband.  Alonia is an internationally-known model and drop-dead gorgeous. Her husband is a writer of no particular note, who secludes himself in a remote cabin for months at a time when he is writing. Alonia offers Spade $50,000 to pay for the search and offers her sister Minerva as fill-in office help while he is away.  While Spade is going back and forth from Durham to Georgia, where the hubby appears to be hold up, Minerva spruces up his office, gets his streetwise assistant to shape up, and drums up an amazing amount of business for Spade’s small, undistinguished firm.  The mystery of why a man would leave a gorgeous woman like Alonia is solved, but Spade’s adventures have just begun.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Alston, E. B., Durham, Mystery, Novels in Series, Piedmont

Robert C. Weber. Block Castle: An Outer Banks Mystery. Baltimore, MD: PublishAmerica, 2004.

Tom Dixon’s memories of his childhood are painful ones–no mother, a drunken, angry father, a fire that destroys the only home he’d known, and then years in an orphanage.  All this unhappiness and poverty stands in contrast to the natural beauty of the Outer Banks and the imposing Block Castle that loomed over the shore a short distance from Dixon’s miserable house.

After being released from prison in Tennessee, Dixon on impulse returns to the Outer Banks.  He learns that the locals think that he started the fire that killed his father.  Dixon can’t accept that, but when he starts to dig into his past, he’s told by one and all that “there are some things in life that are best left alone.”   As Dixon pieces together memories of his childhood with research in old newspapers and courthouse records, and bits of information from the few old timers who will speak to him, he uncovers his true heritage and secrets that a powerful family wanted to keep hidden.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2004, Coast, Mystery, Weber, Robert C.

E. B. Alston. The Hammer Spade Series

I can’t help but like a series that came about, in part, from a librarian’s suggestion.  Dorothy Hodder, one of the great librarians at New Hanover County Public Library, suggested to E. B. Alston, already the author of two thrillers, that he put more intrigue into his books.  This led Mr. Alston to start a story with a private detective as the main character. The story became the novel that begins this series.

Hammer Spade is a detective and bail bondsman living in Durham, North Carolina. Like many fictional private detectives, his office is in a seedy part of town and his personal life is bleak.  The first novel in the series introduces Hammer; his love interest Alonia Lockheart; Shidee Callaway, who is Hammer’s streetwise assistant; and several members of Alonia’s interesting family.  These characters reappear in later novels where they are joined by Hammer’s friends, Dave Quigley and Jack Kane.  Kane, like Hammer, is a Desert Storm veteran.

Each novel opens in North Carolina, as Hammer is asked to handle a case, but the action often shifts to other–and far more exotic–locales. South Africa, Russia, Kuwait, Tibet, and Brazil are just some of the places that Hammer’s cases take him.  Only the books with a full North Carolina setting have individual entries in this blog.

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Filed under Alston, E. B., Durham, Mystery, Novels in Series, Piedmont, Series

Inglis Fletcher. Toil of the Brave. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1946

The unrest of the Regulators and the fight for American independence are of little interest to many of the residents of River Plantation in Chowan County. The beautiful Angela Ferrier busies herself with romances even as her step-father, who sits on the Governor’s Council, fears for North Carolina and his family.  Only when Angela finds herself torn between a dashing British spy and a handsome American army captain does she realize the perils of her times. Although essentially a romance, the last quarter of the book gives a good account of the fighting in North and South Carolina in the fall of 1780.

This is one of the books in Fletcher’s series of novels about North Carolina in the 17th and 18th centuries.

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

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Filed under 1940-1949, 1946, Chowan, Coast, Fletcher, Inglis, Historical, Novels in Series, Romance/Relationship

Price, Reynolds. Blue Calhoun. New York: Atheneum, 1992.

Blue Calhoun narrates the story of his adult years in Raleigh during the 1950s from the distance of old age.  He begins his story in his mid-thirties, when he is working at a store that sells sheet music and instruments.  One day at work, an old friend from school stops by the store with her daughter Luna, who is not much older than Blue’s daughter Madelyn.  At 16, Luna is a talented young musician, and her dark hair, good looks, and confidence catch Blue’s interest.  As the story unfolds, Blue has to grapple with his feelings for Luna and wanting to protect his wife and daughter.  Second and third chances can’t prevent how the reverberations of how Blue’s unfaithful actions will affect his family, including his granddaughter, for whom the story is narrated.

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

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1992, Piedmont, Price, Reynolds, Wake

Joyce Moyer Hostetter. Comfort. Honesdale, PA: Calkins Creek, 2009.

The year is 1945 in this sequel to Hostetter’s earlier novel, Blue.  Ann Fay has returned from treatment in a polio hospital and her beloved father is back from the war.  Ann Fay thinks that she understands the changes that occurred at home during the war–the deprivation, the polio epidemic that killed her younger brother and disabled her–but she has no understanding of what her father went through.  Her father suffers from what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder.  Ann Fay and her father are both in search of healing and peace of mind–“comfort”.   Ann Fay is helped on her path by caring neighbors and treatment at the Warm Springs, Georgia polio treatment center.  Her father’s healing path is lonelier and the outcome uncertain.

Comfort touches on themes of family, community, racial prejudice, and social class, but the novel never bogs down in any way.  Ann Fay’s voice rings true in this beautiful coming-of-age story.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2009, Catawba, Children & Young Adults, Hostetter, Joyce Moyer, Piedmont

Suzetta Perkins. Behind the Veil. Largo, MD: Strebor Books, 2006.

Life in the suburbs of Fayetteville is not necessarily what it seems to be.  For the Myles family, their seemingly perfect life is about to be turned upside down.  Jefferson and Margo have a marriage that has lasted a quarter century, four grown, adoring children, thriving careers, and a cozy house in a nice, friendly neighborhood.  To Margo’s horror, she discovers that Jefferson has embezzled some of his clients’ funds and is heavily involved in the dangerous “Operation Stingray.”   This criminal organization is stealing ammunition from Fort Bragg to sell to Honduran rebels (all with the help of insiders and dirty cops).  Jefferson’s mistakes have put his family and friends in peril.  As if that’s not enough, Jefferson is having a steamy affair with the next-door neighbor, Linda–whose husband has just been murdered.  Margo must find the strength to protect her family while searching for a way to cope with her husband’s destructive misdeeds.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Coastal Plain, Cumberland, Perkins, Suzetta, Suspense/Thriller