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When the well runs dry…
Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson WESTERN ALLIANCES. By Wilton Barnhardt. St. Martin’s Press. 400 pages. $29, hardcover. Wilton Barnhardt must have had a blast writing this latest novel. What fun, imagining (and researching?!) the travels of Roberto Costa, a spoiled, rich (inherited), overgrown kid-adult who’s never held a job and much prefers Europe to his…
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Like fine wine, a good novel grows better with age
Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson. RUIN CREEK. By David Payne. Cedar Lane Books, an imprint of Ingram. 367 pages. $18, paperback. If you’re looking for a beautifully written, moving, wise novel to read while you’re lounging on the beach under a shady tent or umbrella, you couldn’t do better than Ruin Creek, the second of…
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Young love in this world and beyond
Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson MY LIFE ON EARTH AND ELSEWHERE. By Peggy Payne. Hydra Publications. 332 pages. $18.99, paperback. Peggy Payne’s new novel is both a bold departure from her past books and another way of exploring the themes that have run through her fiction from the start. Payne, who lives near Chapel Hill,…
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Looking for Mayberry? Try Roanoke Island
I’m catching up on a few books that slipped through the cracks last year when the newspaper I’d been writing freelance reviews for no longer was able to pay for such things. It’s sad what’s happening to regional newspapers as they are bought by distant enterprises that strip them of staff and resources; it’s a…
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A North Carolina novel you won’t want to miss
Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson INDIGO FIELD. By Marjorie Hudson. Regal House Publishing. 410 pages. $22.95. Marjorie Hudson’s debut novel is so beautifully written, so powerful, so true and so haunting that it’s hard to come up with one adjective sufficient to describe it. Suffice it to say that if you’re making a list of…
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Murder at the salvage yard
Here’s a remarkably good first novel by the latest addition to my list of outstanding North Carolina authors. Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson IT DIES WITH YOU. By Scott Blackburn. Crooked Lane Books. 304 pages. $27.99. When Hudson Miller was just a boy, his dad “dismantled” what had been a reasonably happy, church-going, middle class…