Category Archives: 1990-1999

1990-1999

Penelope J. Stokes. The Blue Bottle Club. Nashville, TN: W Publishing Group,1999.

The year 1929 is coming to an end, and most people in the United States have started to feel the dreadful onset of the Great Depression. For four young women in Asheville, North Carolina, everything in their lives is uncertain except for one thing: their dreams. Letitia Cameron dreams of marrying the wealthy and well-connected Philip Dorn and having a large, happy family. Adora Archer has set her sights on becoming a successful actress in Hollywood or on Broadway. Eleanor James, who has lived a privileged life thus far, hopes to become the next Jane Addams as a social worker. Mary Love Buchanan wishes to follow her talent as an artist. The four commit their dreams to paper and stuff the pieces into a blue bottle stored in Letitia’s attic. No matter what happens in the coming days, the friends will always have their dreams – and each other.

Sixty-five years later Brendan Delaney, a news anchor for WLOS, is at the Cameron House reporting on its upcoming demolition. She thinks that it is just another dead-end story until a worker discovers the blue bottle. This discovery renews Brendan’s passion for investigative journalism, and she sets out to find Letitia, Adora, Eleanor, and Mary Love to learn how (or if) they fulfilled their dreams.

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

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1999, Buncombe, Mountains, Religious/Inspirational, Stokes, Penelope J.

Barbara Neely. Blanche on the Lam. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992.

Barbara Neely was sharing insights about the lives of African American women who earn their livings as domestic workers long before The Help hit bookstores.  In this first novel in a four book series, Blanche White, feisty and forty-something, takes a week-long job with a rich family as a way to hide out after she is sentenced to jail on a bad-check charge.  The family are off to their country house in Hokeyville, a good distance from the Durham County jail where Blanche is supposed to spend the next thirty days.  Not that time with the Mumsfields doesn’t feel like a sentence.  The family matriach, Aunt Emmeline, is in decline and family members are circling like vultures to get their hands on her money.  But there are other things going on too–the suicide of the local sheriff, the death of the family’s long-time gardener, and Aunt Em’s disappearance. Curious and observant by nature, Blanche decides that she has to get to the bottom of it all.  What she finds is multiple  murders–and a family that will pay her to go far away.

Blanche on the Lam is listed as one of the  20 Essential Novels for African-American Women. See the whole list at http://www.accreditedonlinecolleges.org/blog/2011/20-essential-novels-for-african-american-women.

 

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

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1992, Mystery, Neely, Barbara, Novels in Series, Piedmont

Tamar Myers. The Den of Antiquity Mysteries.

All Abigail Timberlake wants is to run her antiques store, The Den of Antiquity, in peace. In charming Charlotte, North Carolina, this shouldn’t normally be a problem, but at Abby’s store murder is always on sale. First, her batty junk-collector aunt is strangled; next, a dead body turns up in an 18th-century wardrobe; then an old woman is murdered outside Abby’s shop for the deceptively valuable vase she was carrying. The list goes on and the bodies pile up, and Abby always seems to be caught in the crossfire, whether it’s dodging killers, dealing with her boorish ex-husband and his new trophy wife, or falling for handsome police detectives. It’s almost enough to make a girl want a change of scene, and in the eighth book, Nightmare in Shining Armor, Abby does move to Charleston, South Carolina for a time. Happily, she returns to the Old North State in the sixteenth and final book, The Glass is Always Greener. These cozy murder mysteries are perfect for lazy days at the beach or adding some spice to your lunch break!

Set in North Carolina:

1. Larceny and Old Lace
2. Gilt by Association
3. The Ming and I
4. So Faux, So Good
5. Baroque and Desperate
6. Estate of Mind
7. A Penny Urned
16. The Glass is Always Greener


The first book in the Den of Antiquities Series

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Try the first book in the series, Larceny and Old Lace, today! Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library Catalog.

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Filed under 1990-1999, 2000-2009, 2010-2019, Mecklenburg, Myers, Tamar, Mystery, Novels in Series, Piedmont, Series

John H. Hyman. The Relationship. Manassas, VA: E.M. Press, 1995.

Scotland Neck, North Carolina, in 1944 is a typically charming Southern town. Everyone knows everyone, and people generally look out for one another. Johnnie, the nine year-old narrator, describes the many adventures he and his best friend Wormy encounter that summer. Although Johnnie is white and Wormy is black, the two boys do not allow the racial tensions of the segregated South to disturb their relationship. They daydream about concocting solutions that will make them invisible so that they can both take part in activities such as buying a Coke and a moon pie at the local grocery.

The two boys seem to have a penchant for mischief; examples include the time Johnnie’s father’s taxicab ended up at the bottom of Scout Pond and the day the boys hopped a train thinking it would take them to the next town but ended up in Norfolk, Virginia. As Johnnie grows up, he recognizes more often the discrimination Wormy endures, especially after Wormy is attacked for taking part in a whites-only activity. Although Johnnie acknowledges that Scotland Neck is not perfect, he appreciates the lessons he learns over the summer of 1944 before he and his newly-widowed mother move to northern Virginia. Most of all, he is grateful for his time there with Wormy.

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

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1995, Coastal Plain, Halifax, Historical, Hyman, John H.

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

Susan S. Kelly. How Close We Come. Wilmington, NC: Banks Channel Books, 1997.

Ruth and Priscilla (Pril) were friends and neighbors for a decade. The women came and went in each other’s houses without knocking, they traveled together, their children played together, and they traded babysitters, advice, and confidences.  Pril knew that Ruth was worldly, a bit unconventional.  Despite their differences, the two women shared an uncommon emotional intimacy. Or so Pril thought.  When Ruth inexplicably leaves her husband and her home in Greensboro, Pril is stunned. She had no sense of Ruth’s unhappiness and no warning of what Ruth was about to do.  Pril’s private sorrow turns to alarm when Ruth’s husband subpoenas Pril to testify in the custody hearing for the children he and Ruth share.  As Pril prepares for her role in the case, she reviews her friendship with Ruth.  This is Susan Kelly’s first novel; posts for her later novels are also on this blog.

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

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1997, Guilford, Kelly, Susan S., Piedmont

Clay Harvey. A Flash of Red. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1996.

While Tyler Vance is in the drive-through for his local bank one day, a fleeing bank robber points a gun at him and demands he hand over his truck.  In that instant, Vance’s unique, deadly, and very secret military training takes over.  He shoots and kills the robber, not knowing that the dead man has some “family” ties to international drug dealers, gun runners, and racketeers.  Tyler’s life as a freelance writer, recent widower, and single father quickly turns dangerous as the mobster’s connections try to exact vengeance upon him.  He turns to friends, family, and old army connections for help surviving the attacks and keeping his son safe.  Author Clay Harvey, like main character Vance, lives in North Carolina and writes articles and books about guns.  A Flash of Red is the first book in Harvey’s series about Vance.

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

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1996, Harvey, Clay, Mecklenburg, Piedmont, Romance/Relationship, Suspense/Thriller

James Patterson. Kiss the Girls. Boston: Little, Brown, 1995.

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.

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1995, Durham, Novels in Series, Orange, Patterson, James, Piedmont, Suspense/Thriller

Margaret Maron. Southern Discomfort. New York : Mysterious Press, 1993.

When she was running for the open district judge position in Colleton County, Deborah Knott commented to a meeting of the local WomanAid group that she wished she could take time out of campaigning to help with their work.  Now that she has been appointed to the seat, the group has come to claim her weekends and she starts working with a group of women building a house for a needy single mom and her kids.  On top of her new duties and the construction project, the new judge also faces violence in her community and in her family.  Before the house is finished, the group’s electrician (who also happens to be Deborah’s niece) is attacked, the accused attacker is found dead, and the girl’s father is poisoned.  This is the second in the series of Judge Deborah Knott mysteries.

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

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1993, Coastal Plain, Maron, Margaret, Mystery, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places

Jan Karon. A Light in the Window. Elgin, IL: Lion Pub., 1995.

In the second of the Mitford novels, Father Tim must deal with a variety of women in his life. The recently widowed Edith Mallory is pursuing him in a not-so-subtle manner that includes delivering delicious casseroles to his home. The life-long bachelor doesn’t mind the food, but he is in love with someone else: his neighbor, the lovely children’s book author Cynthia Coppersmith. Unfortunately, he isn’t sure how to proceed on that front. He also has his bossy assistant Edith meddling in his life and a mysterious female cousin from Ireland comes to stay in his house. Barnabas the unruly dog also makes appearances, as does young Dooley, whose troubles at school distress Tim.

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

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1995, Karon, Jan, Mountains, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Religious/Inspirational, Romance/Relationship