Tag Archives: Journalists

Barbara Arntsen. High on the Hog: A Peri Mason Mystery. United States: CreateSpace, 2012.

Reporter Periwinkle “Peri” Mason is looking forward to a relaxing Carolina fall. Earlier in the year she narrowly avoided becoming a victim while unexpectedly solving a slew of murders on Myrtle Beach, and in her opinion, once was enough. Unfortunately, the universe has other plans for the tough journalist from fictional Lofton, North Carolina.

While walking along the Neuse River in Wayne County near Lofton, Peri’s spirited Jack Russell terrier discovers something truly grisly– a body floating in the shallows. The corpse is that of Curtis Ganner, who was missing for several days. Mysteriously, his truck was found miles upriver, making murder the likely cause of his demise. Curtis worked for the McKeel Processing Plant, which is one of the largest pork producers in eastern North Carolina. The plant’s human fatality rate begins to rise when another missing employee is also found murdered. When a third victim’s head is found among some porcine remains, Peri can’t help herself– she starts investigating.

As she digs into the soft underbelly of the pork industry the intrepid reporter finds not only murder, but industrial espionage. Soon she is knee-deep in pig excrement (literally and figuratively), and more in danger than ever. Will Peri make it out alive this time?

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

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2012, Arnsten, Barbara, Coastal Plain, Duplin, Mystery, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Suspense/Thriller, Wayne

Lucy Arlington. Buried in a Book. New York: Berkley Prime Crime, 2012.

Lila Wilkins has worked at the Dunston Herald for twenty years, so she is shocked and enraged when, at age forty-five, she finds herself jobless. But Lila isn’t one to lie around and wait–within a few minutes of finding out about her layoff, she’s on the phone interviewing for an internship with nearby publishing house, A Novel Idea. An internship may seem like small potatoes to a seasoned journalist, but the ad states that she could be promoted to full-fledged literary agent within three months, so Lila dives in.

A Novel Idea has revitalized the small, neighboring village of Inspiration Valley. Bentley Burlington-Duke, director of the agency, is a North Carolina native who made her money in New York City. Now she’s determined to make North Carolina the hub of publishing in the South. Bentley isn’t an easy person to get along with, however– A Novel Idea’s interns only seem to stay a short time, despite the promise of a permanent position. Lila is going to have to stiffen her spine in order to achieve the coveted status of literary agent. It doesn’t help that on her first day, a prospective client dies in the foyer. Marlette Robbins was a local ne’er do well with a bad reputation, but something about his death strikes Lila as odd. Soon she’s embroiled in the investigation, to the (slight) annoyance of attractive local policeman Sean Griffiths. But soon Lila is in deeper than she realized, and it’s possible that her very life could be on the line. Will she survive? And more importantly, will she ever be a literary agent?

Check out this first book in the Novel Idea Mystery series in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

 

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2012, Arlington, Lucy, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Suspense/Thriller

Sandra Balzo. Dead Ends. Sutton, Surrey, England: Severn House, 2012.

AnnaLise Griggs has built a life as a journalist in Wisconsin, far away from her childhood home in the fictional town of Sutherton, North Carolina. But when her mother begins having health issues and an affair with a married man has a messy end, AnnaLise takes an extended leave of absence and returns to her home to the North Carolina mountains. She’s worried about her mother, but expects her month-long vacation to be relatively uneventful. Then Ben Rosewood, her erstwhile beau, shows up with his wife Tanja and college-aged daughter Suzanne.

Suzanne is starting as a freshman at a prominent local university, so Ben’s appearance isn’t all that suspicious, but AnnaLise still feels stalked. She ended things with Ben, and he was less than agreeable to the idea. When his wife Tanja is killed in a car accident that turns out not to be an accident, AnnaLise immediately suspects he’s gone off the deep end in order to be with her. But could the steady, very sane Ben Rosewood she knew in Wisconsin really murder his wife in cold blood? Between her mother’s memory lapses and a potential murderer, AnnaLise’s vacation is shaping up to be less vacation and more work than expected. Balzo’s second novel in her new Main Street Murders series gets off to a fast-paced start as her heroine applies all of her investigative skills to the case.

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

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2012, Balzo, Sandra, Mountains, Mystery, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places

Suzanne Adair. Camp Follower. [United States: CreateSpace], 2008.

At age seventeen in 1768, lowborn Helen Grey was sold in marriage to an old, corpulent merchant bound for the Americas. Her saving grace was her disgusting husband’s educated assistant, Jonathan Quill, who had to play Pygmalion to her Galatea in order to make Helen presentable for the aristocracy in the colonies. Now, twelve years later and nine years widowed, Helen is fighting to survive in wartime Wilmington, North Carolina. After her husband’s demise in a duel, his monetary estate mysteriously vanished, leaving Helen near penniless. She now ekes out a meager existence taking in embroidery work for wealthy ladies and writing a small society column in a Loyalist magazine.

Then Helen’s editor comes to her with a proposition: if she poses as the sister of a British officer in His Majesty’s Seventeenth Light Dragoons, Helen could get close to Britain’s hero of the hour, Colonel Banastre Tarleton, and write a hard-to-acquire feature. Colonel Tarleton doesn’t approve of journalists, so Helen’s mission would be completely covert. But there is more beneath the surface of this apparently simple mission than meets the eye, and soon Helen is up to her neck in danger, intrigue, colonial spy rings, and the attentions of three separate men, one of whom is supposed to be posing as her brother. Traveling through a wild back country overrun with rebels, it’s possible that Helen’s greatest danger lies in the men supposedly protecting her best interests. Set in both North and South Carolina and concluding with the tactically decisive Battle of Cowpens, this romantic historical thriller combines an exciting time in the history of the United States with lots of imagination.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2008, Adair, Suzanne, Coast, Historical, New Hanover, Piedmont, Romance/Relationship

Barbara Wright. Crow. New York: Random House Books for Young Readers, 2012.

“We will never surrender to a ragged raffle of negroes, even if we have to choke the Cape Fear River with carcasses.”
Alfred Moore Waddell, leader of the 1898 Wilmington race riots

The only complete overthrow of a local government in US history, the Wilmington race riots successfully removed the Fusionist party from power in the North Carolina town of Wilmington. In early November, a group of  insurrectionists known as the Red Shirts seized power from the legally elected officials, both white and black. Armed with rifles and a Gatling gun mounted on a wagon, they burned the offices of the  local African-American newspaper and wounded, killed, or ran off the majority of the black population.

Crow is the story of this coup, as seen through the eyes of Moses Thomas, a young African-American boy just entering the sixth grade. Moses is a typical child; he likes swimming, eating pie, riding bicycles, and getting into a little trouble now and again. Bright and motivated to learn, he loves going to school and finding new words, but lately he’s been frustrated. There’s trouble brewing in Wilmington, and no one will explain what’s going on. Groups of men in red clothing walk the streets, getting drunk and listening to angry speeches, and he isn’t allowed to enter the slogan contest at the hardware store, even though he’s under 18 and has the best entry. Worst of all, everyone is whispering words like “lynching” and “rape” without telling Moses what they mean.

Despite the tension,  Moses is mostly happy. His daddy, Jack Thomas, is an educated and honest man who works as a reporter for the Record in addition to serving as an alderman. Father and son share a particularly special bond, and together they spend hours playing word games and discussing philosophy. The other pillar of Moses’ life is Boo Nanny, his aged grandmother. Boo Nanny is the opposite of her son-in-law Jack in many ways–superstitious, filled with stories and poems, and prone to making bad-smelling medicinal concoctions. A cautious person lacking in self-esteem due to the abuse she endured as a slave, Boo Nanny’s ideas on the best ways to approach the growing conflict with white Wilmingtonians often cause her to clash with Jack, but the little family loves one another deeply all the same.

But with election day looming and the Red Shirt violence increasing, will the relative peace of Moses’ small world be shattered forever? A mature and heartbreaking look at an often ignored piece of American history, Wright’s novel, though aimed at young adults, will capture readers of all ages.

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

 

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2012, Children & Young Adults, Coast, Historical, New Hanover, Wright, Barbara

A. L. Provost. The Trust of Old Men: The Coastal Plain Conspiracy. New York: Xlibris, 2010.

This complicated mystery, set in North Carolina during the Roaring Twenties, begins simply. UNC Hill freshman Alan Barksdale has labored diligently all first semester, with the dream of one day becoming a banker like his esteemed father, Marvin Barksdale. Mr. Barksdale is currently both the trust officer and manager of the enormously wealthy Commerce Bank in Raleigh due to the terrible death of the previous manager. Impatient to be reunited with his family for the winter holidays, young Barksdale hops in his brand-new, 1920 four-door Ford the minute classes end on the evening of December 20th. The snow falls thick and fast, and Alan tragically fails to see the young woman waving her hands in the middle of the road until it is too late. At least that’s what the Good Samaritan who stops to help tells the distraught young man.

Speaking of tragedy, seventeen wealthy, elderly men and women have passed away during 1920 on the Coastal Plain. But these deaths are no mystery: the Lenoir County Medical Examiner has carefully determined that each death was simply the result of age. Heart attacks, a misstep on the stairs, and falling overboard during fishing expeditions are only to be expected when men and women pass their seventies! Unfortunately for the departed, it’s possible that their ends were hastened by a lack of living kin on whom to spend their time and considerable fortunes–kin who might have prevented these accidents.

At first glance, no honest citizen would ever think that these deaths and Alan’s fatal car crash were related. But Norman Bates, a hotshot young reporter from Kinston, smells a rat. Now he’s on the tail of the biggest heist in North Carolina…maybe even America. But will he survive long enough to discover the truth?

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

 

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Filed under 2010, 2010-2019, Historical, Lenoir, Mystery, Provost, A. L., Suspense/Thriller, Wake

Chris Forman. Killer Cuisine. Lexington, KY: CreateSpace, 2011.

Ian Porthos Wallace feels lucky to live in the lovely (fictional) town of Port City on the coast of North Carolina. There, he makes his living as a local food critic and photographer, and indulges in his love for wearing the kilts of his Scottish ancestors whenever he can. He most definitely isn’t a detective, but because he tries his hand now and then at writing mystery novels, his friend Demos Spyros begs him to help solve a case. Their mutual friend Nick has been falsely accused of murdering his boss, chef Mitchell Reede, and Demos is convinced that Ian can prove Nick innocent. Ian isn’t so sure–he’s no professional gumshoe–but eventually he agrees to give it his best shot. It helps that Demos’s attractive sister, and Ian’s off-again-on-again girlfriend, Athena, owns a store near the crime scene. Athena, traumatized years ago by an abusive husband, has been more than a little distant up until now, but lately Ian is convinced that she’s making a real effort to open up to him.  The sensitive food-critic-turned-investigator does what he can to encourage her feelings, but he is distracted by the murder, which only gets more mysterious as the evidence piles up. Worst of all, it’s starting to look as though Athena’s no-good, abusive ex is back in town, and possibly involved with the crime. As the situation heats up, it’s all Ian can do to keep Athena safe and solve the mystery at the same time.

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

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2011, Coast, Forman, Chris, Mystery, New Hanover, Novels Set in Fictional Places

Deborah Wallis. Child’s Play. New Bern, NC: McBryde Publishing, 2011.

The subject matter of this book is every parent’s worst nightmare: the kidnapping of children by a pedophile ring. When Abby Weaver sees the Amber Alert message for a missing boy on her television, she wants to take action. Abby joins the group of volunteers looking for Garrett Morrow, hoping to give back to the community some of the kindness that she experienced when her husband died six months ago.  When another young boy is kidnapped and Garrett’s body is found, Abby’s thoughts turn to something else.  In an earlier book, Sweet Dreams & Flying Machines, Abby’s son, Chris, was almost abused by a pedophile. That experience has haunted Abby, and when she sees how much the kidnapped boys looked like each other and their resemblance to Chris, Abby injects herself into the investigation.  As a journalist, she knows how to talk to people, and her articles in the Raleigh newspaper give her visibility. Following a lead given her by an elderly woman, Abby and her friend Fran find where the boys have been kept, but the danger is far from over as Abby and Chris become targets of two men who want revenge.

Although parts of this book are chilling, there are some lighter moments, and the reappearance of NCIS special agent Brad Marshall left this reader wondering if future books in the series will include a new romance for Abby.

This is the second book in the Abby Weaver Mystery series.

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

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2011, Coast, Craven, Novels in Series, Onslow, Wallis, Deborah

Susan Donovan. Cheri on Top. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011.

Cherise “Cheri” Newberry returns to her hometown just as Barbara Jean Smoot’s Impala is pulled from Paw Paw Lake. Cheri is back in Bigler, North Carolina after a wildly successful stint as a realtor in Tampa. Her beloved grandfather has asked her to come home to take over the family newspaper, the Bigler Bugle,  but Cheri expects to stay in the mountain community only for a month or two. Too much baggage remains in Bigler: her memories of being an ambitious, resourceful woman in a place that stifled her as she was growing up; fears that her parents’ death was her fault; and the still painful sting of losing her first true love, J.J. (now the Bugle‘s dashing editor). She just wants to get the paper running smoothly, and the discovery of the car owned by Smoot, a young woman who went missing in the 1950s, is sure to sell papers and make her return to Florida quicker.

As Cheri begins to sift through the Bugle‘s financial paperwork, she discovers something far worse than low readership. Thousands of dollars have been taken from the company, and that illegal deed is connected to Smoot’s murder. Fortunately for Cheri, she has reconciled with J.J., and their growing relationship gives her strength to confront the truth–and expose some of her own skeletons.

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

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2011, Donovan, Susan, Mountains, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Romance/Relationship

Richard Folsom. Indian Wood. [United States: BookSurge?], 2009.

Is it possible that three people were murdered because of something they found on an old reel of microfilm?  That’s what newspaperman Luther Surles wants to find out in this mystery that moves between the Court of Queen Elizabeth I and present day Greenville and Lumberton, North Carolina.

Carl Burden and Luther Surles met when they were covering a Klan rally in Robeson County in 1958. Carl was a cub reporter; Luther had been a newspaperman for a few years.  Luther stayed in journalism, but Carl went to graduate school and eventually became a history professor at East Carolina University.  Carl’s research interest is the Lost Colony and a possible connection between the colonists and the Lumbee Tribe.

Carl’s new graduate student, the lovely Roberta Locklear, is also interested in a Lost Colony-Lumbee connection, and soon both Carl’s research and his love life heat up.  But Roberta has her own history, and Luther begins to suspect that some piece of that ties into Carl’s murder.  This novel moves weaves stories of the wars, exploitation, and double-dealing of earlier centuries with a very twenty-first century story of property development and greed.  As a bonus, the book contains a novel-within-a-novel–Carl’s historical novella on the Lost Colony.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2009, Coast, Coastal Plain, Cumberland, Dare, Folsom, Richard, Greene, Historical, Mystery, Robeson