New and Upcoming Adult Books from North Carolina Authors

What Alex has always wanted is family. She comes under the spell of Ted Neal, a charismatic activist on his way to Mississippi for 1964's Freedom Summer. Ted organizes a collective that turns to the growing anti-war movement. Ultimately the radical group destroys the "family" Alex and Ted have created, and Ted disappears while under FBI investigation. When Ted surfaces eleven years later, Alex must put her life back together in order to discover what true family means.

When the pandemic struck, nature writer David Gessner turned to Henry David Thoreau, the original social distancer, for lessons on how to live. Those lessons—of learning our own backyard, re-wilding, loving nature, self-reliance, and civil disobedience—hold a secret that could help save us as we face the greater crisis of climate.

A starred Booklist review says, “Tucker's debut follows two women through their drug-induced skid to rock bottom, highlighting their easy access to drugs in rural North Carolina and their complicated friendship. Raw, powerful, and unflinching, the novel immerses readers in the minute-by-minute mindset of addiction. Tucker skillfully flips between past and present, swapping the language of sobriety for the slang of active addiction to give readers a full picture of the pair’s mental state. Tucker’s novel champions the strength it takes to stay clean when every other decision is so much simpler.”

Beginning in the 1970s, five veteran airmen sat for interviews with military historian Colin Heaton. Decades after the guns fell silent, they recounted in vivid detail the most dangerous missions that made the difference in the war. Ed Haydon dueled with the deadliest of German aces—and shot him out of the sky. Robert Johnson racked up kills in his P-47 Thunderbolt, but nearly lost his life when his guns jammed. Curtis LeMay was the Air Corps general who devised the bomber tactics that pummeled Germany’s war machine. Robin Olds was a football hero who became one of the most aggressive fighter pilots in the European Theater. And Jimmy Doolittle became the most celebrated American airman of the war after he led the raid to bomb Tokyo. Today these heroes are long gone, but now, in this incredible volume, they tell their stories in their own words.

In 1710, Christoph von Graffenried of Bern, Switzerland, began building houses; the fledgling town took on the name of his native city, becoming New Bern, North Carolina. 300 years later, von Graffenried’s descendant returns to a racially divided New Bern and, over a period of 15 years, takes photographs of everyday life in this small town: a Black church congregation; young white girls at rifle practice; Black men exchanging cash on the street; a white couple displaying their collection of firearms; and more.