Category Archives: 2006

2006

Patti O’Donoghue. Celia: The Adventures and Misadventures of Two Misplaced Southern Girls. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006.

Celia Stanhope loved her life at Stanhope Mill. She swam and canoed on the lake with her parents, learned how to take newspaper-worthy pictures with her camera, and danced with her father at her parents’ frequent, lavish parties.

But when Celia’s parents died in a plane crash, everything changed. Now she’s under the guardianship of her aunt Anita, a military officer who called Celia “a frizzy-haired ball of arrogant petulance” and who tried to auction off Celia’s camera and canoe at the Stanhope Mill estate sale. As if that weren’t bad enough, she’s taking Celia away from North Carolina to live with her at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany!

Life at the base improves once Celia befriends rebellious Goldie O’Brien, but their escapades get Celia into serious trouble with her aunt. Celia’s forbidden friendship and struggles to live with her strict aunt make for engaging reading in this first novel of the Stanhope Trilogy.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Children & Young Adults, Coastal Plain, Novels in Series, O'Donoghue, Patti, Wayne

Henrietta F. Ford. Murder on the OBX. Baltimore: PublishAmerica, 2006.

Travis White and Sam Barnett are two good friends looking forward to a vacation.  Their jobs as Alcohol Beverage Control agents in Northampton County, North Carolina are not particularly trying, but each man has suffered a loss in his personal life.  The Outer Banks is part of their territory, but this trip is meant to be strictly a vacation. Their first night in Nags Head they do all those vacation things–eat local seafood, have a few beers, checkout their fishing spot for tomorrow–but those relaxing moments are are about all they get.

When the daughter of a local restaurateur is a hit-and-run victim, Tavis and Sam want to investigate the crime.  Dare County law enforcement officials don’t welcome their help.  That changes when an old bootlegger, Maynard Drane, turns up dead on the beach.  Now local officers Shucks Twine and Nona Godette are eager to work with the two friends who knew Drane from way back.  The team is just making progress when the FBI, INS, and ATF swoop in and attempt to muscle the locals out of the investigation.  Maybe this case isn’t just about bootlegged liquor.  Agency rivalries and sexual attractions complicate the case.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Coast, Ford, Henrietta F, Mystery

Tim Myers. A Pour Way to Dye. New York: Berkley Prime Crime, 2006.

In his poem “Mending Wall,” Robert Frost wrote “Good fences make good neighbors.” At the beginning of A Pour Way to Dye, the soap-making Perkins family is at odds with jeweler Ernest Joy over a fence he has installed on their business property. Although their shops are close, the relationship the Perkins share with the Joys is not, and this fence is not a goodwill gesture. When Ben Perkins goes to Ernest Joy’s house to confront him, he is met by the police and an ambulance: Ernest has just been murdered – with a bar of soap from Where There’s Soap in his hand. Because of the conflict between the families and his proximity to the crime scene, Ben is the top suspect in the case. However, there are a few other people who Ben thinks should be examined: Joy’s greedy children, a vengeful, estranged wife, and an ex-con with whom Joy had been in cahoots. As Ben digs for clues to clear his name, he discovers the surprising murderer.

A Pour Way to Dye is Tim Myer’s second novel in the “Soapmaking Mystery” series.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Myers, Tim, Mystery, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places

Sharon Wildwind. First Murder in Advent. Detroit: Five Star, 2006.

Throughout the past few years, parallels have been made between the current war in Afghanistan and the war in Vietnam four decades earlier. The popularity of each war dwindled over time, and acclimation back into society was difficult for veterans. For Army nurse Captain Elizabeth Pepperhawk (also known as Pepper), ex-Special Forces first sergeant Benny Kirkpatrick, and former military policewoman Avivah Rosen, getting used to 1972 America after tours in Vietnam is especially difficult. They experience flashbacks, have trouble relating to civilians–and are pushed back into survival mode in the mountains of North Carolina.

After receiving a phone call from Benny, Pepper drives in a snowstorm to the Convent of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in mountainous Crossnore, North Carolina. Benny is concerned about Avivah’s well-being following a conflict in New York City with a robber; specifically, he worries that the press will hassle Avivah and uncover some secrets from Vietnam that she did not want to surface. Being surrounded by friends for a restful break is exactly what Benny thinks Avivah needs. However, their plans change when members of the Saratoga Patriotic Foundation arrive at the convent. This organization, which sees itself as an alternative to the U.S. Army, is forcing the convent to turn over its buildings and land using a suspicious deed nearly a century old. When Avivah’s new lover, Gary, is found dead, the three friends begin to wonder which characters in this strange cast they can trust: the nuns, the members of the foundation (including a history professor, a troubled Korean War veteran, and a World War II general), even each other. As they race to get to the bottom Gary’s murder and others and to uncover the secret of the convent, Pepper, Benny, and Avivah must soldier on in the remote retreat – without electricity or an exit plan.

First Murder in Advent is Sharon Wildwind’s second novel in the Elizabeth Pepperhawk/Avivah Rosen Vietnam Veteran Mystery Series.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Avery, Mountains, Mystery, Novels in Series, Suspense/Thriller, Wildwind, Sharon

Tom Lewis. Sunday’s Child. Rocky Mount, NC: VP Publishing, 2006.

When Sunday’s mother dies in childbirth, she is handed over to a father who was unaware of her existence. Slick Everette is a gambling man, but a good cook, and he has been the cook for the surf men on Pea Island.  Sunday grows up among these men, nurtured by them, and learning to fish, hunt, swim, sail, cook, heal with herbs and roots, and see the beauty and dangers of the natural world.

The man-made world is something else.  In her teen years, as Sunday interacts with the white community on Roanoke Island and the mixed lot of men who do conservation work on Hatteras Island as part of the New Deal public works programs.  Sunday’s strength of character impresses everyone, but she is nonetheless victimized.  Her life takes an unexpected turn when German sailors on a special mission come ashore.

This is the first book in the Pea Island Trilogy.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Coast, Dare, Lewis, Tom, Novels in Series

Don Glander. Beyond Borders: Murder and High Crime on the Waterway. United States: American Imaging, 2006.

Matt and Lindy are two retirees living a quiet life on the coast in Brunswick County.  Matt is happy to catch and cook blue crabs, listen to jazz, and shoot the breeze with the neighbors. Lindy prefers a more active life, and she is in town most days working as a volunteer translator at the health clinic and other county offices.  Their quiet life is changed when Matt discovers the body of a Mexican immigrant in the water near his crab pots.  The young man has been murdered in what appears to be a professional hit.  Another murder follows.  Although the murders appear to have been done by a local policeman, the police chief thinks that they were the work of someone else, possibly an outsider.  Matt and Lindy find confirmation of that hunch when a desperate immigrant that Lindy knows through her translating work takes refuge with Matt and Lindy.  Soon they are all in the gun sight of the local boss of a Mexican crime syndicate in this novel that wraps the subject of illegal immigration into a fast-paced thriller.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Brunswick, Coast, Glander, Don, Suspense/Thriller

Elizabeth Spann Craig. A Dyeing Shame: Death at the Beauty Box. Pineland, FL: Palmland Publishing, 2006.

The fictional town of Bradley, North Carolina, is an old Southern town in which the weekly hair appointment is an eagerly anticipated outing for women such as Myrtle Clover, the octogenarian protagonist in Spann’s first novel. Unfortunately, Myrtle’s routine now has a snag: Tami, her hairdresser, has just been murdered. A few months earlier, everyone would have been sad about her death, but Tami’s recent lapse into alcoholism made her bitter and unpleasant. Myrtle, the literature-quoting former English teacher, sees this unfortunate death as an opportunity to break her boredom and to prove to her son, the Bradley police chief, that her mind is still sharp. When Myrtle finds her best friend and neighbor, Edna, bludgeoned to death in her garden, the mystery hits too close to home. Myrtle puts the clues together using her favorite soap opera, Tomorrow’s Promise, as a guide. Finally she realizes the motive for her friends’ deaths and helps her son solve the case.

A Dyeing Shame is Elizabeth Spann Craig’s first book in her Myrtle Clover mystery series.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Craig, Elizabeth Spann, Mystery, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places

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

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

Stephen March. Catbird. Sag Harbor, NY: Permanent Press, 2006.

Zeb Dupree is down on his luck in New Orleans when he finds a one-eyed abandoned puppy in a trash can.  Zeb’s wife is leaving him for another man, his father recently committed suicide, and he just lost his job as a newspaper editor.   In the midst of this mid-life crisis, Zeb heads back to Cedar Springs, North Carolina, the town where he attended college on a scholarship in the 1960s.

The novel alternates between the present and flashbacks of Zeb’s life growing up in the fictional Seaton, N.C.   This emotional shuffling between the past and present intensifies Zeb’s struggling efforts to rebuild his life.   After his return to Cedar Springs, Zeb works as a condo painter and a fiddler in a traveling country-rock band, dates an artist named Jenny, and tries to reconnect with his family.   His family members are also plagued by the loss of their father and the stress experienced by a younger brother who is a Vietnam vet.   Zeb begins to find peace (or at least patience) when he buys the property surrounding his father’s old house and begins to renovate the structure and farm the land.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, March, Stephen, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Piedmont