Tag Archives: NASCAR

Wendy Etherington. Raising the Stakes. Toronto: Harlequin, 2010.

Evie Winters and Jared Hunt saw each other all the time when they were growing up.  Their parents were good friends and the extended Winter and Hunt families gathered for holiday meals, summer cookouts, and life’s small and large events.  Evie–a tall girl with a talent for math–had a crush on Jared, but Jared was a boy who taste ran to cheerleaders and prom queens.  Evie once confessed her love for Jared. Even after he rejected her, the two kept up a friendship on the phone and via email.

As the years passed, Evie established herself as an accountant in New York. Jared stayed in North Carolina and parlayed his skill tinkering with machines into an impressive career as an engine builder for NASCAR teams.  The years have been hard on both families–deaths, job losses, and worse–but the final blow for Evie’s mom comes when her younger son is accused of murder.  Evie takes a leave from her job in New York to come home and help her mother cope.

Evie finds temporary work analyzing the accounts for the FastMax racing team, one of the teams that uses Jared’s engines.  Evie’s cost-cutting measures at FastMax jeopardize Jared’s contract with the company and create distrust between the old friends even as a romance blooms between them.   Just when it appears that business matters will not stand between the lovers, family secrets threaten their happiness.

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

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Filed under 2010, 2010-2019, Etherington, Wendy, Piedmont, Romance/Relationship

Joyce and Jim Lavene. Before the Last Lap. New York: Avalon Books, 2005.

In some workplaces, colleagues come to feel like family.  That’s how Sheriff Sharyn Howard feels about some of the men and women in her department.  When her assistant, Trudy Robinson, is linked to two murders and Trudy’s husband, a deputy sheriff, confesses to the killings to protect his wife, Sheriff Howard goes into overdrive.  She’s sure that the killings have to do with skulduggery at the speedway, but she’s hampered by the community’s anger over the death of a popular driver and the FBI’s unexplained interest in the case.  This is the eleventh Sharyn Howard mystery.

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

Comments Off on Joyce and Jim Lavene. Before the Last Lap. New York: Avalon Books, 2005.

Filed under 2000-2009, 2005, Lavene, Jim and Joyce, Montgomery, Mystery, Novels in Series, Piedmont

Ann B. Ross. Miss Julia Takes Over. New York: Viking, 2001.

At the opening of Miss Julia Takes Over, Hazel Marie Puckett disappears after a dinner-date in Asheville with Abbotsville’s new fundraiser. Although Hazel Marie was the mistress of Julia’s now-deceased husband, she and her son Lloyd are now part of Julia’s family and the upstanding widow is determined to find her. Since the police won’t help, Julia enlists the assistance of a beer-drinking, womanizing private eye. Her search brings her all around North Carolina and has her meeting a NASCAR driver outside Rockingham, whose missing property is connected to Hazel Marie’s disappearance. Readers of the first novel in the Miss Julia series will be familiar with the cast of supporting characters, including Miss Lillian, Sam Murdoch, Pastor Ledbetter, and televangelist Brother Vernon Puckett.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2001, Henderson, Humor, Mountains, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Ross, Ann B.

Janet Evanovich. Motor Mouth. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

At the opening of Evanovich’s second Alexandra “Barney” Barnaby thriller, Barney is just finishing up her first season as a mechanic and spotter for her NASCAR-driving ex-boyfriend, Sam Hooker. While watching the season’s last race in Florida, she becomes convinced that one of the teams is cheating. Her suspicions–combined with the bumbling of a desperate friend and co-worker–lead her and Hooker to “borrow” an 18-wheeler carrying two racecars and a shrink-wrapped corpse and starts them on an action-packed adventure that includes stops in Concord, NC. Quirky characters abound, including Beans the drooling St. Bernard. The action in the series’ first book, Metro Girl, takes place mainly in South Florida.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Cabarrus, Evanovich, Janet, Novels in Series, Piedmont, Suspense/Thriller

Sharyn McCrumb. St. Dale. New York: Kensington, 2005.

This funny, touching novel is a modern-day retelling of the Canterbury Tales, following a group of unlikely friends on the Dale Earnhardt Memorial Pilgrimage. The “Number Three Pilgrims” travel to several of the sites of prominent victories of the late NASCAR legend and North Carolina native. In the course of their journey they visit Piedmont North Carolina, “the land of textile mills and furniture factories, of tobacco fields and hog farms — and race tracks.” At stops at the Richard Petty museum in Randolph County, the North Carolina Motor Speedway in Rockingham, and the Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord, the pilgrims find solace and inspiration in the life and legacy of Earnhardt.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2005, McCrumb, Sharyn, Piedmont