Monthly Archives: June 2013

by | June 28, 2013 · 11:49 am

Jennifer Estep. The Mythos Academy Series.

  • First Frost (e-novella). New York: Kensington Publishing, 2011.
  • Touch of Frost. New York: Kensington Publishing Corp., 2011. 
  • Kiss of Frost. New York: Kensington Publishing Corp., 2011.
  • “Halloween Frost” in Entangled, ed. Allison Brennan (e-short story). Authors4theCure, 2011.
  • Dark Frost. New York: Kensington, 2012.
  • Crimson Frost. New York, Kensington Publishing, 2013.
  • Spartan Frost. New York: Kensington Books, 2013.
  • Midnight Frost. New York: K-Teen, 2013.
  • Killer Frost. New York: Kensington Publishing, 2014

Gwendolyn Frost is a normal teenaged girl– well, as normal as any of the teenagers attending Mythos Academy. High in the mountains of western North Carolina, the academy provides a safe place for teens like Gwen to get an education. Gifted with supernatural abilities, all of the students are the descendants of ancient warriors or mythical creatures. But Gwendolyn doesn’t think her powers are very exciting– sure, being a Gypsy with the power to find lost objects and read people’s thoughts has its uses, but it’s not like being a Spartan or a Valkyrie and being gifted with abnormal strength, speed, and agility. Gwen wishes she were as talented athletically as her peers, particularly because she has a crush on the school’s most popular and good looking boy.

Everything changes, of course, when a supernatural threat looms over the academy. Somehow Gwen finds herself at the center of the fighting– as the champion of the Greek goddess Nike herself. How does a simple Gypsy girl with no talent for swordplay become a goddess’s champion? And can she even survive? Find out in this exciting young adult series, reminiscent of Percy Jackson’s The Lightning Thief  and the 1981 film Clash of the Titans.

 

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Filed under 2010-2019, Buncombe, Children & Young Adults, Estep, Jennifer, Mountains, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Series

by | June 21, 2013 · 3:31 pm

Brynn Bonner. Paging the Dead. New York: Gallery Books, 2013.

pagingSophreena McClure and Esme Sabatier are an odd couple.  The women are partners in a family history research business, and they share a home in the fictional town of  Morningside, North Carolina.  Sophreena is quite short and looks like a classic mild-mannered nerd.  Esme is over six feet tall and carries every inch of that height with attitude.  Sophreena’s approach to their work is always the same–systematic research and meticulous documentation.  Esme adds an unorthodox element–she gets messages from the spirit world.   In the five years that they’ve worked together they have traded off each other’s strengths and gotten used to dealing with the prickly wealthy people who are their usual clients.

Dorothy Pritchett Porter is typical of their clients: she wants a sanitized version of her family history packaged in an attractive set of scrapbooks to impress anyone who visits her in her mansion on Crescent Hill.  Sophreena and Esme are on track to deliver that in time for Mrs. Porter’s open house on the weekend of the town’s Honeysuckle Festival.  As Paging the Dead opens, the researchers have just made Mrs. Porter very happy by locating a ring that is a long-missing family heirloom; as they leave, she is  playing with the great-niece who she adores.  That is the last time that they see Mrs. Porter alive.

Because Sophreena and Esme are among the last people to see Mrs. Porter alive, the police, in the person of detective Denton Carlson, visit the women at their home.  It’s not long before half the town considers them suspects.  To clear their names and protect their business, Sophreena and Esme begin to poke around.  With an estranged husband, a somewhat feckless nephew, and long-lost sister who has recently returned to town, there is no shortage of suspects.

This reader senses that Paging the Dead may be the first book in a projected series. Sophreena and Esme’s backstories are revealed, as is how the two women met, and readers become acquainted with their circle of friends.  Romantic interest are introduced.  It is clear that something will develop between Esme and Detective Carlson, although readers should not be too hopeful about Sophreena’s chances with Jackson Ford, the landscape architect who is part of the women’s social group.

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

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2013, Bonner, Brynn, Mystery, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Piedmont

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by | June 18, 2013 · 7:30 am

Jen Calonita. The Grass is Always Greener. New York: Poppy, 2013.

thegrassisalwaysgreenerThe conclusion to Jen Calonita’s Belles series finds half-sisters Mirabelle and Isabelle Monroe each facing her own crossroads. The Monroe family is used to an easy life, but that changed when Isabelle “Izzie” Scott (in reality Monroe) arrived. Hailing from the nearby struggling community of Harborside, the daughter State Senator and family patriarch Bill Monroe never knew existed has certainly made life interesting in the affluent town of Emerald Cove. No one has felt the changes more than Izzie’s half-sister Mirabelle.

Originally a quiet conformist, Mirabelle has started to march to the beat of her own drum. She’s pursuing her own interests in painting, as well as a quirky, artistic boy named Kellen. Izzie has changed her life,  but nothing is perfect. Kellen is moving away, and Mirabelle’s novice artwork faces harsh criticism from a teacher. Will she stay true to her newfound path?

Although used to blazing her own trail, Izzie has trials to face as well. Shortly following the death of her beloved grandmother, an aunt Izzie never knew about arrives in town. Zoe Scott had a terrible falling out with her sister, Izzie’s mom, before Izzie was ever born. Now Zoe wants to make amends and take her niece away to live in California. Izzie isn’t sure if she wants her aunt in her life, much less if she wants to leave the Old North State. Additionally, Savannah Ingram, the alpha girl of Emerald Preparatory, looks ready to make Izzie pay for disrupting the status quo. Forced to work with the snobby queen bee on a project, Izzie is sure she’ll be miserable. But is Savannah really as bad as she thought? Torn between the lessons of her meager upbringing and the challenges of her new, shinier life, Izzie must decide what her future will hold.

Both girls are about to turn sweet sixteen, and at this rite of passage they must decide who they will be. But since Isabelle and Mirabelle Monroe first accepted one another as sisters, one thing is certain– whatever they face, they’ll face it together.

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

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2013, Calonita, Jen, Children & Young Adults, Coast, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places

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by | June 17, 2013 · 7:33 am

Ann B. Ross. Miss Julia Stirs Up Trouble. New York: Viking, 2013.

miss juliaReaders of this series know that Miss Julia has come to love Hazel Marie and her son Lloyd, who is the illegitimate son of Miss Julia’s late husband.  They are family.  So much so that Julia and her new husband, Sam Murdock, have settled the pair, along with Hazel Marie’s husband, J.D. Pickens, and their twin girls into Sam’s old house.  Not only does the Pickens family have a nice house, but Sam’s cook, James, has stayed on to help.  This is a blessing because Hazel Marie was never much of a cook and those babies have her worn down.  But James is no spring chicken and when he injures himself in a fall, the Pickens household is in crisis.  James needs help to get in and out of bed, so Hazel Marie must tend to him and her babies, keep the house in order, and cook the kind of meals that keep a man at home. (J.D. was a womanizer before he married Hazel Marie and he travels quite a bit for his work–all of which causes Miss Julia to worry about this marriage.)

Of course, Miss Julia steps in.  She has trouble finding a temporary cook, so she lines up various friends to come over and both cook and give Hazel Marie cooking lessons.  (The recipes that are used are scattered throughout the book.)  Organizing all these cooking lessons is quite a juggling act, but it is nothing compared to managing the personalities sharing space at the Pickens house.  James proves to be a demanding patient, Hazel Marie’s sleazy uncle, Brother Vern, is back in town and has moved in, and Granny Wiggins, who Etta Mae has recruited to clean, is a tornado of energy–and opinions.  Plus, Miss Julia and Lillian have both spotted J.D. with another woman and they will do anything to keep Lloyd from finding out that his new dad is no saint.  This, the fourteenth book in the Miss Julia series, is a tasty dish of misadventure, misunderstanding, and southern charm.

A note on the dust-jacket:  The imagery on dust-jackets has become stereotypical and formulaic–and sometimes even misleading.  It’s not uncommon for the image on the cover to misrepresent some basic element of the location or the main character by, for example, making the heroine a blonde when the book says she’s a brunette, or showing a mountain lodge out of Travel + Leisure when the action takes places at an abandoned hunting cabin.  The dust-jacket for Miss Julia Stirs Up Trouble is an exception to this trend.  It’s a delight to look at the image and see so many items mentioned in the book–everything from a bag of Gold Medal flour to a grilled cheese sandwich to J.D.’s aviator style sunglasses.  Kudos to the people at Viking Press.

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

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2013, Henderson, Humor, Mountains, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Ross, Ann B.

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by | June 13, 2013 · 7:29 am

Katrina Thomas. Coastal Summons. Las Vegas, NV: Montlake Romance, 2013.

coastal

Laina Danvers and Ian Hamilton grew up together, not quite family but almost.  Laina’s father was the foster child of Ian’s grandparents, and when he died Ian’s grandparents took her in and raised her.  But the car accident that killed Laina’s father also killed Ian’s father and uncle.  Beatrice Hamilton made peace with that tragic accident but her grandsons never did.  They took their anger out on Laina because her father had been behind the wheel.  Even now, as adults, they are cold and cutting toward her.

Ian Hamilton was the exception among the Hamilton boys, and he is the person who Laina turns to for help when she notices that Beatrice (Gram) is beginning to fail.  The family is scattered and each sibling has adult responsibilities: Ian is an assistant district attorney in Richmond; Elliott is a partner in a large insurance company; Cal is a financial adviser; and cousin Palmer moved to California is escape his overprotective mother.

Laina is busy too as the president of an international trading company and the foster mother of a seven-year old girl.  But just as Gram was always there for her when she was a child, Laina will help Gram now.  When Laina has visited Gram in Arlington, Virginia she’s noticed that the older woman has become frail and is forgetting things, but it is Gram’s annual move to the beach house on Hatteras Island that precipitates a crisis.  The house needs a lot of work, and Gram shouldn’t be there alone.  Laina can see what needs to be done, but the Hamilton men will not accept her advice on anything.  When the family gathers at the beach house on the Fourth of July weekend a stray box of letters reveals something about their shared past that upends the Hamilton family story and allows Ian and Laina to acknowledge feelings that his brothers’ hositility toward Laina forced them to hide.

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

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2013, Coast, Dare, Romance/Relationship, Thomas, Katrina

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by | June 6, 2013 · 5:22 pm

Sarah Martin Byrd. The Color of My Heart. Greenville, SC: Ambassador International, 2013.

color heartHow well do we know our neighbors?  How well do we even know our own family?  Laura Carter loves her husband, Cam, and although she knows his father Monroe is a hard, racist man, she treats her father-in-law with respect.  Laura accepts the fact that Cam, an accountant, has to help his father with his farm, and she does not object when Cam goes out at at night to assist his dad.  Laura believes that she and Cam are a team, and that together they can weather any storm.

Laura’s belief is put to the test in more ways than she could have imagined.  Laura has always known that she was adopted.  At her birthmother’s request, it was a closed adoption–Laura has never know anything about her birth family.  As The Color of My Heart opens, Laura’s birthmother, Nelda Brinson, is dying and Nelda’s grandmother makes the fateful decision to contact Laura.  Nelda and her Me-Maw live so close by that Laura can visit them, and in doing so she finds out that her mother and her people are African Americans.  As Laura, Cam, and their daughters are adjusting to that fact and getting to know their new family, their older daughter Larkin becomes pregnant.  The baby’s father is her long-term boyfriend, a boy whose father is a good friend of Cam’s father and who shares his racist views.  Sarah Martin Byrd weaves these three strands together in multi-generational story that contains history, horror, cruelty, compassion, and uplift.

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

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2013, Byrd, Sarah Martin, Davie, Iredell, Piedmont, Religious/Inspirational, Rowan

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by | June 5, 2013 · 12:50 pm

Scott J. Toney. Hearts of Avon. United States: Breakwater Harbor Books, 2013.

Caroline Lilly made a mistake getting involved with John.  She was in high school when they met; John was a bit older and Caroline was flattered that he would take an interest in a young woman like her.  At first he was gallant and loving, but then he turned controlling and even violent.  To get away from John, Caroline and her mother leave Pittsburgh and head to the Outer Banks for a long vacation.  Caroline’s Aunt Suzie has a house on the beach at Avon.  The women are going there to paint the house, talk, and just enjoy some time together.

Ben is a different kind of painter. He and his father, Mason, are landscape painters who make a good living selling their artwork up and down the coast.  A chance encounter on the beach brings Ben into Caroline’s world, as he protects her from John and helps her to heal after Hurricane Irene tears up the Outer Banks and upends both their worlds.

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

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2013, Coast, Dare, Toney, Scott J.

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