Tag Archives: Summer

by | July 8, 2011 · 3:01 pm

Leslie Neil Strickland. The Weekend. Bloomington, IN: Xlibris Corporation, 2010.

Stormy Tyler is a gorgeous, redheaded lawyer stuck in an unhappy marriage, so she’s looking forward to spending a relaxing weekend with her work friends at picturesque Bodie Island on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. As fate would have it, Nash Jenkins and Dustin Collier, two handsome machinists on leave from the US Navy, are also planning a trip to the same resort. When the lovely lawyers and the suave sailors meet, The Weekend truly begins and becomes one for everyone to remember as they explore, swim, surf, and fall in love.

Filled with meticulously researched detail on Bodie Island and its idyllic resorts, readers will recognize all their favorite places and discover new ones as they follow Stormy, Nash, and their friends in their romantic romping. A first time author, Mr. Strickland has written a great novel for romance enthusiasts to take on vacation.

Due to the mature nature of the material, this book is recommended for adults only.

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

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Filed under 2010, 2010-2019, Coast, Dare, Romance/Relationship, Strickland, Leslie Neil

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by | October 19, 2010 · 9:09 am

Marybeth Whalen. The Mailbox. Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2010.

Nineteen years have passed since Lindsey’s first summer in Sunset Beach, North Carolina, when she was introduced to the mysterious mailbox on a deserted stretch of beach. Her beau at the time, Campbell, described the folklore behind it and encouraged her to write a letter to the Kindred Spirit who guards the mailbox. Over the years, Lindsey has dutifully left an account of the year in the mailbox, often describing her life in Charlotte, crumbling marriage, and sadness over losing Campbell.

Now she is back in Sunset Beach with her children, just days after finalizing her divorce. Although Lindsey has hoped over the past year that her husband would come back to her, she is trying to accept her new beginning. She runs into Campbell, and her emotions from nearly two decades ago return. Even though Lindsey felt betrayed  by the way things ended in 1986, she still feels a connection to him. However, Lindsey discovers that Campbell violated her trust by reading her letters in the mailbox over the years. When she decides that she cannot lose him again, Lindsey realizes she and Campbell have always been each other’s Kindred Spirit.

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

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Filed under 2010, 2010-2019, Brunswick, Coast, Religious/Inspirational, Romance/Relationship, Whalen, Marybeth

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by | May 14, 2010 · 9:20 am

Fern Michaels. Wildflowers: Sea Gypsy. Toronto: HQN, 2010.

After spending a few years working as a publishing editor in New York, Cathy Bissette wants a lazy summer at home. She’s just received a promotion–she’ll be the editor working with Teak Helms, a novelist who specializes in sea adventures. She has his latest draft to review over the summer.

Swan Quarter, North Carolina, seems like the perfect place to relax and do some quiet work, with the calming sound of the Pamlico Sound and the picturesque landscape against blazing sunsets. However, Cathy’s plan hits two snags. Helms, who is her favorite writer, has written a terrible galley, and she and her father have unexpected guests. An out-of-towner, Jared Parsons, wants her father to fix his yacht, and Cathy is quick to judge the wealthy gentleman and his seemingly flawless “secretary,” Erica. Despite Cathy’s repeated rejections, Jared, handsome and charming, continues to make grand overtures to her during the time it takes her father to repair the boat. When it becomes clear that Jared appreciates her for her simplicity and wholesomeness, Cathy slowly begins to allow herself to fall for him. Before they can make their romance official, however, Jared’s true identity – and shocking connection to Swan Quarter – must be revealed.

Wildflowers is a reprint of two romance novels. Sea Gypsy (1980), set in North Carolina, is the first story; Golden Lasso (1980), set in Arizona, is the second.

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

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Filed under 2010, 2010-2019, Coast, Hyde, Michaels, Fern, Romance/Relationship

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by | April 30, 2010 · 9:30 am

Vicki Sterling Hasty. Eliza and the Analogies of Burnshire. Baltimore: PublishAmerica, 2009.

Eliza wasn’t exactly thrilled about going to summer camp. She would have preferred to stay at home with her mother to practice her favorite activity—solving analogies. However, when her mother says she’s enrolled Eliza at Camp Camden, Eliza bravely packs a few trusty analogy books and gives camp a chance.

But then, just as Eliza begins to settle into the rhythm of camp, she stumbles upon a magic portal in the camp stable. It leads to the mystical land of Burnshire, where animals talk and the wicked king incinerates anyone who opposes him! The persecuted animals recruit Eliza and her friends to save Burnshire from the king by solving a series of analogies. Eliza’s skills are put to the test in this fast-paced fantasy adventure.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2009, Children & Young Adults, Coastal Plain, Hasty, Vicki Sterling, Hoke, Science Fiction/Fantasy

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by | December 1, 2009 · 9:41 am

Ellen Elizabeth Hunter. Murder at Wrightsville Beach. Greensboro, NC: Magnolia Mysteries, 2005.

It’s mid-August, so Ashley Wilkes succumbs to the lure of the beach.  Sister Melanie has rented a large “cottage” (sleeps fourteen) at Wrightsville Beach. Ashley knows that she should stay in Wilmington and finish a 1920s house that she is restoring, but she needs a rest.  Rest is just what she doesn’t get.  Melanie’s rental is stocked to the roof with guests, including super-model Kelly Lauder.  On a visit to the local art gallery, Ashley, Melanie, and Kelly find the owner dead, and it’s off from there.  As Ashley fends off an unwanted suitor and begins to think that the killer may be after her, she worries about her husband Nick who has been hard to contact since he went on a special job for the CIA.

Hunter weaves in elements from other novels in the series, including Wilmington’s historic neighborhoods, sea turtle protection, and Ashley’s efforts to juggle her personal and professional responsibilities. Readers who enjoy these novels for the bits of area lore that they contain will be interested in the information on the use of German POWs on area farms during World War II.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2005, Coast, Hunter, Ellen Elizabeth, Mystery, New Hanover, Novels in Series

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by | October 19, 2009 · 9:07 am

Catherine Clark. Picture Perfect. New York: HarperTeen, 2008.

This is Emily’s last family vacation before she heads off to college.  Every two years her father takes the family to meet up with his college buddies and their families.  This year the gathering will be on the Outer Banks where Emily will be reunited with three friends who are children of her dad’s friends.  Emily and Heather think that it’s time that they had a summer fling.  As the girls start to checkout the boys of summer, they are thwarted by Adam and Spencer, sons of their father’s friends who now might be seeing the girls in a new light.  Since Emily narrates the story, readers get inside the head of a teenage girl, learning her interests, her lingo, her fears.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2008, Children & Young Adults, Clark, Catherine, Coast, Dare

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by | September 18, 2009 · 11:12 am

Margaret Maron. Sand Sharks. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009.

A professional conference at Wrightsville Beach sounds like just the thing that Judge Deborah Knotts needs.  While her new husband is in Virginia tying up some loose ends of his previous life, Deborah can relax on the beach and catch up with old friends over long, leisurely dinners. There are the usual professional ambitions and jealousies on display, but none of it bothers Deborah until one of her colleagues is murdered.  The deceased was shark who had sullied his robes with unethical behavior.  Now that he’s dead all the other judges are talking about him, but Deborah’s interest in the crime is greater than most after she learns that one of those unethical acts involved a man who was Deborah’s big mistake from her college years.  But it turns out that there are many people in Wilmington connected to the murdered judge, and the suspect list grows accordingly.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2009, Coast, Maron, Margaret, Mystery, New Hanover, Novels in Series

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by | August 20, 2009 · 4:29 pm

Joyce and Jim Lavene. The Telltale Turtle. Woodbury, MN: Midnight Ink, 2008.

Mary Catherine Roberts is a pet psychic with her own syndicated radio show. Even without such a distinctive vocation, Mary Catherine would never be just a face in the crowd.  She’s a showy dresser, someone who speaks up for herself, and she runs a clinic for injured and abandoned animals right in the heart of downtown Wilmington.  One day on her way home from the radio station, Mary Catherine hears the voice of an injured, frightened animal.  She follows the voice to a house in Wilmington’s historic district.  The front door opens at her touch, and in the parlor Mary Catherine finds the body of a middle-aged woman and a bleeding turtle.  The dead woman was the aunt of the radio station manager, Colin Jamison.  The police suspect him of the murder, but Mary Catherine knows he’s not capable of it and Tommy, the turtle, assures her that Colin is not the killer.  Mary Catherine tries to work with the police (who give no credence to her insights) even as her life is complicated by the attentions of two men who show interest in becoming Mary Catherine’s husband #5.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2008, Coast, Lavene, Jim and Joyce, Mystery, New Hanover

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by | July 14, 2009 · 11:25 am

Cathy Holton. Beach Trip. New York: Ballantine Books, 2009.

On a resort island off the coast of Wilmington, four friends gather to renew the ties they had as college students twenty years earlier. Mel, Sara, Annie, and Lola plan to sunbathe, laugh, and party, but their conversations develop a darker tone.  Each woman has made her share of mistakes, and each lives with some sorrow.  Annie and Mel unload secrets that have burden them since college, but it is Lola who finds a more dramatic way to turn her life around.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2009, Brunswick, Coast, Holton, Cathy, New Hanover

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by | October 27, 2008 · 3:05 pm

Mary Alice Monroe. Time Is a River. New York: Pocket Books, 2008.

If your friend was recovering from breast cancer and sexual betrayal, would you offer her quiet time in a cabin where a murder might have taken place? What was Belle Carson thinking?!? She clearly wasn’t expecting her friend Mia to get interested in that old murder, the one that had caused so much pain to Belle’s family. But once Mia finds the diary of Belle’s grandmother, the accused murderer, she begins to ask questions and poke around in the library and in town, trying to uncover the truth about the accusations against Kate Watkins. Kate was not a murderer, but a proud, confident journalist and fly-fisher. Drawing strength from Kate’s life, Mia puts hers back together.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2008, Buncombe, Coast, Monroe, Mary Alice, Mountains, Novels in Series, Romance/Relationship

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