Monthly Archives: March 2011

by | March 24, 2011 · 11:49 am

Jacquelin Thomas. Shades of Gray. New York: Steeple Hill Books, 2006.

Sela and Rodney Barnes married when they were quite young, and as this novel opens they are celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary.  They have built a good life together–their two oldest children are in college at North Carolina State University, and Rodney owns a successful trucking business.  But Rodney’s parents have never accepted Sela.  They believe that Rodney’s marriage to Sela and the quick birth of their oldest daughter kept Rodney from finishing college and becoming to white collar professional that they expected him to be.  Although it is unsaid, Sela can sense that they disapprove of her because she is African American and Mr. and Mrs. Barnes are white.

Sela’s relationship with Mr. and Mrs. Barnes is one of the few points of tension between her and Rodney.  Religion is the other one.  Rodney has been born again as a Christian; he and the children attend church each week and he looks to the Bible for guidance in his daily life.  Shortly after the celebration of  their twentieth wedding anniversary, Rodney is diagnosed with heart disease.  After a heart transplant fails to save Rodney, Sela is left to raise the children and run the business alone.  Reading Rodney’s diary, and an intervention by her two oldest children, help Sela to see the value of religion and to make peace with her in-laws. There will be challenges ahead, but Sela and her family–all of them–will go down the road together.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Piedmont, Religious/Inspirational, Thomas, Jacquelin, Wake

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by | March 23, 2011 · 2:31 pm

Abigail DeWitt. Dogs. Davidson, NC: Lorimer Press, 2010.

Molly Moore, the daughter of a judge, grew up in a large home with four brothers and sisters. On the surface, her family exuded the suburban Texas lifestyle: wealthy, highly-educated, and on par with the Joneses. However, the Moore family was not as close others expected, and they fell apart when Molly was still an adolescent. The lack of compassion she received from her father and her desire to fit in led Molly to develop an unhealthy understanding of sex.

After quitting Harvard to become a maid, Molly becomes pregnant. On a whim, she decides to move to the mountains of North Carolina to raise her child. While there, she finds happiness and peace, again as a maid, living in a trailer with her son. This serenity is interrupted when a car driven by her father kills her former best friend’s daughter and later when her father dies of cancer. In these trials, Molly must reexamine her father’s life and their relationship to find a deeper meaning for herself.

Although most of this novel is set in Texas and Massachusetts, Molly seems happiest in North Carolina.

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

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Filed under 2010, 2010-2019, DeWitt, Abigail, Mountains

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by | March 18, 2011 · 4:20 pm

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

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by | · 4:09 pm

Mark Schweizer. Liturgical Mysteries.

Hayden Konig, the main character in this series, is one busy man.  He’s the police detective in the fictional little North Carolina mountain town of  St. Germaine.  He’s also the choirmaster and organist at the local Episcopal church, St. Barnabas, and an aspiring mystery writer.  Hayden pecks out his novels on Raymond Chandler’s 1939 Underwood No. 5 typewriter, something he bought at an auction at Christie’s.  It was quite a splurge.  Hayden thought it would provide inspiration, but he soon finds that his little town gives him more material than he can use. Over the course of the series, Hayden encounters civic clubs battling over who’ll have the prime time for the living creche display, nudity at a nearby church camp, a missing gorilla, diamonds in the town’s time capsule, a chicken known as Binny Hen the Scripture Chicken who selects passages from the Bible, an assortment of flaky and funny townsfolk, and dead bodies that turn up in the choir loft with unsettling frequency.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2010-2019, Mountains, Mystery, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Schweizer, Mark, Series, Watauga

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by | March 15, 2011 · 3:49 pm

Heather Newton. Under the Mercy Trees. New York: Harper, 2011.

When Leon Owenby, the eldest of five siblings, goes missing in Willoby County, North Carolina, his family rallies together to try to find him. Although he is an ornery (at best) individual, his disappearance is unsettling. Leon always keeps to himself, close to the family’s mountain homeplace, so leaving unannounced is out of character for the sixty-five-year-old.

With the family’s assistance, the sheriff’s office searches the property. As they collect clues that point to Leon’s whereabouts, facts about the siblings surface. James is having an especially hard time dealing with his brother being gone. His wife’s affair with Leon decades earlier left him demoralized, and he feels conflicted now. Martin, the baby of the family, is lost in his own way: he is in a dead relationship, unemployed, and an alcoholic. Coming home to Willoby forces Martin confront old wounds, but being with his childhood friends rejuvenates his spirit. People have always considered Ivy troubled because she sees spirits. Her gift, however, gives Ivy greater insight than anyone suspects. Eugenia resents her siblings’ quirks. Uncomfortable with the undesired attention, she is more interested in keeping up appearances than helping her family cope with their loss.

In their search to find their brother, the Owenbys learn about themselves and their family.

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

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2011, Mountains, Newton, Heather, Novels Set in Fictional Places

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by | March 11, 2011 · 9:47 am

Jessica Beck. Sinister Sprinkles. New York: St. Martin’s, 2010.

It’s early December, time for the April Springs Winter Carnival.  Mother Nature has cooperated this year by providing an early snow.  The carnival is on track to be a big success–until a woman is murdered right in front of city hall.  The victim is Darlene Higgins, a local hairdresser and the woman who broke up Suzanne Hart’s marriage.  Suzanne is immediately considered a suspect, but her alibi is rock solid–half the town saw her tending the booth she set up outside of her donut shop.  With Suzanne in the clear, police suspicions turn to Suzanne’s ex-husband, Max, who has disappeared.  Suzanne’s feelings about Max are complex, but she has enough residual affection for him that she doesn’t want him railroaded for Darlene’s murder.

It turns out that Max is not the only local who is missing.  With help from her friend Grace, and George, a retired policeman, Suzanne searches for Max and the missing woman, while simultaneously investigating Darlene’s relationships.  A series of snow storms slow down their progress.  During the storms Grace stays with Suzanne, and some of the nicest scenes in the novel  are the dinners that Grace shares with Suzanne and her mom.  (As with the other novels in this series, Suzanne’s relationships get equal time with the mystery.)  Although Sinister Sprinkles deals with such troubling topics such as financial abuse of the elderly, blackmail, and internet scams, the tone is always light, and the book is an enjoyable read.

This is the third novel in the Donut Shop Mystery series.

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

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Filed under 2010, 2010-2019, Beck, Jessica, Mountains, Mystery, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places

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by | · 9:42 am

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

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by | March 8, 2011 · 1:39 pm

Jessica Beck. The Donut Shop Mysteries.

April Springs, North Carolina is Suzanne Hart’s hometown, so she is not about to leave it when her marriage breaks up.  Suzanne moves back in with her mother and buys the donut shop in the heart of downtown.  There trouble finds her.  First, a body is left outside the shop early one morning, then someone dies after eating one of Suzanne’s donuts.  Even when Suzanne has no apparent connection to the murder, the local police chief suspects her.  Continually feeling that she has to clear her name, Suzanne wades into any number of mysteries in her town.  Along the way, readers get to know an endearing cast of characters, including Suzanne’s mother, ex-husband, Max, her best friend, Grace, and George, a retired policeman who helps Suzanne.  Even Suzanne’s nemesis, Police Chief Martin, is gently portrayed in this cozy mystery series.

As a bonus to readers, each book includes recipes for some of the baked goods mentioned in the novel.  Sweet!

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Filed under Beck, Jessica, Mountains, Mystery, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Series

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by | March 4, 2011 · 3:34 pm

Carl Kenney. Backslide.Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing, 2010.

Backslide picks up where Kenney’s earlier novel, Preacha’ Man left off.  Simon Edwards is living in Dallas with his love, Jamaica, and teaching at a seminary.  Simon should be happy, but he feels uneasy with his decision to leave the ministry.  He knows that he is succeeding at the seminary, but he senses that this is not what God wants him to do.  When a phone call comes from Calvin, a former member of Simon’s church, asking Simon to come start a new church, Simon returns to Durham, North Carolina.

Simon throws himself into creating the new church, but success is not a sure thing.  Many of the same forces and individuals who fought Simon in his earlier ministry are still around, and Simon has to learn to move beyond bitterness and earlier definitions of success.  He also has to reconsider his feelings for some of the women in the church.  Simon is without Jamaica, who has stayed in Dallas for her work, and some of the tension in the book comes from Simon’s struggle with their relationship.

This is a slower-paced, more introspective book than Preacha’ Man.  As Simon reflects on his situation, he considers insights from modern theology as well as the Bible, adding depth to the story.

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

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Filed under 2010, 2010-2019, Durham, Kenney, Carl, Piedmont

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