New and Upcoming Releases from NC Authors

Our Hideous Progeny by C.E. McGill
Mary is the great-niece of Victor Frankenstein. She knows her great uncle disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the Arctic, but she doesn’t know why or how. . . .The 1850s are a time of discovery, and London is ablaze with the latest scientific theories and debates, especially when a spectacular new exhibition of dinosaur sculptures opens at the Crystal Palace. Mary is keen to make her name in this world of science alongside her geologist husband, Henry—but despite her sharp mind and sharper tongue, without wealth and connections their options are limited. When Mary discovers some old family papers that allude to the shocking truth behind her great-uncle’s past, she thinks she may have found the key to securing her and Henry’s professional and financial future. Their quest takes them to the wilds of Scotland; to Henry’s intriguing but reclusive sister, Maisie; and to a deadly chase with a rival who is out to steal their secret.

Aluminum Alley : The American Pilots Who Flew Over the Himalayas and Helped Win World War II by Rory Laverty
By the time Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, China was already under siege. The Imperial military invaded and choked off every land and sea route for the young country's resupply, and what remained of China was out of gas and withering away. So in April 1942 the United States decided to help out, by trying something entirely new and a little bit crazy. The world's first airlift. Over the Himalayas. Led by brilliant and stubborn American generals including Joseph Stilwell, Claire Chennault, and William Tunner, this improvised lifeline for Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists aimed to keep more than a million Japanese troops tied up in an unwinnable occupation, far away from the brutal combat then unfolding in the Pacific. For 42 months the American 'Hump pilots' flew aviation gas, ammunition, food and other life-or-death cargo from Assam, India over Burma and the eastern Himalayas and into southern China. Frequent ice storms, unpredictable Japanese air attacks, impenetrable jungles, and the often-invisible presence of 15,000 feet of granite and ice were a formidable challenge for young American pilots in bare-bones cargo planes with primitive instruments and no margin for error. One out of every three airmen who flew the Hump would not make it home. Aluminum Alley is the true story of an unheralded group of pilots in a cursed and forgotten theater of combat, over the world's highest mountains and deepest jungles - all to help the Allies defeat Japan in World War II. Based on interviews with survivors of the Hump and the airmen's letters, journals, flight logs and other resources, this is narrative nonfiction with the immediacy and intimacy of memoir and the big-picture analysis of the best military history.

All the Pretty Places: A Novel of the Gilded Age by Joy Callaway
Rye, New York, 1893. Sadie Fremd's dreams hinge on her family's nursery, which has been the supplier of choice for respected landscape architects on the East Coast for decades. Now her small town is in a panic as the economy plummets into a depression, and Sadie's father is pressuring her to secure her future by marrying a wealthy man among her peerage--but Sadie has never been one to play it safe. Besides, her heart is already spoken for. Rather than seek potential suitors, Sadie pursues new business from her father's most reliable and wealthy clients of the Gilded Age in an attempt to bolster the floundering nursery. But the more time Sadie spends in the secluded gardens of the elite, the more she notices the hopelessness in the eyes of those outside the mansions. The poor, the grieving, the weary. The people with no access to the restorative beauty of nature.

Who's Your Founding Father? : One Man’s Epic Quest to Uncover the First, True Declaration of Independence by David Fleming
Composed during a clandestine all-night session inside the Charlotte courthouse, the Mecklenburg Declaration was signed on May 20, 1775—a date that’s still featured on the state flag of North Carolina. A year later, in 1776, Jefferson is believed to have plagiarized the MecDec while composing his own, slightly more famous Declaration and then, as he was wont to do, covered the whole thing up. Which is exactly why Adams always insisted the MecDec needed to be “thoroughly investigated” and “more universally made known to the present and future generation.” Eleven U.S. Presidents and many of today’s most respected historical scholars agree. Now, with Who’s Your Founding Father?, David Fleming picks up where Adams left off, leaving no archive, no cemetery, no bizarre clue or wild character (and definitely no Dunkin’ Donuts) unexplored while traveling the globe to bring to life one of the most fantastic, important—and controversial—stories in American history.In 1819 John Adams came across a stunning story in his hometown Essex Register. He breathlessly described it to his political frenemy Thomas Jefferson as “one of the greatest curiosities and one of the deepest mysteries that ever occurred to me…entitled the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. The genuine sense of America at that moment was never so well expressed before, nor since.” The story claimed that a full 14 months before Jefferson crafted his own Declaration of Independence, a misfit band of zealous Scots-Irish patriots, whiskey-loving Princeton scholars, and a fanatical frontier preacher had joined forces in a remote corner of North Carolina to become the first Americans to formally declare themselves “free and independent” from England.

The Egyptian Chronicles #2: In Feast or Famine by Mesu Andrews
After four-year-old Asenath’s mother is murdered by Egypt’s foreign rulers, the child is raised to be a priestess by her overprotective father—high priest of Egypt’s sun god. For fifteen years, Asenath is sequestered in the upper levels of Ra’s temple, convinced it is her destiny to heal the land by becoming queen to the next Egyptian pharaoh. But when Egypt’s foreign king instead gives her as a bride to the newly appointed vizier—a Hebrew named Joseph—her entire world is shaken. 

Lawyer, Jailer, Ally, Foe : Complicity and Conscience in America's World War II Concentration Camps by Eric L. Muller
It is 1942, and World War II is raging. In the months since Pearl Harbor, the US has plunged into the war overseas - and on the home front, has locked up tens of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans in concentration camps, tearing them from their homes on the West Coast with the ostensible goal of neutralizing a supposed internal threat. At each of these camps the government places a white lawyer with contradictory instructions: provide legal counsel to the prisoners, but keep the place running. Within that job description is a vast array of tasks, and an enormous amount of discretion they can use for good or for ill. They fight to protect the property the prisoners were forced to leave behind on the coast; they help the prisoners with their wills and taxes; and they interrogate them about their loyalties, sometimes to the point of tears. Most think of themselves as trying to do good in a bad system, and yet each ends up harming the prisoners more than helping them, complicit in a system that strips people of their freedoms and sometimes endangers their lives.

The Last Wild Road : Adventures and Essays from a Sporting Life by T. Edward Nickens
The Last Wild Road is a raucous, gripping, sometimes terrifying, often hilarious, and deeply meditative journey through the heart of the outdoors in the modern world. Collected from more than 20 years of hunting and fishing cover stories, columns, and adventure tales written by T. Edward Nickens for Field & Stream, this book is a road trip that takes in a huge sweep of the North American landscape—blackwater rivers in the wilds of eastern North Carolina, deserts and prairies of the American West, remote tundra of northern Canada, and the wildest rivers of Alaska. Along every rutted road and rough trail, with a rod, gun, and pen, Nickens meets unforgettable characters—old French-speaking Cajuns at Louisiana squirrel camps, a one-armed fly-tyer in the ancient Appalachians, Pennsylvania brothers who lost their father in a hunting accident decades ago and return to the scene for a powerful, poignant encounter with history. He explores remote wilderness waters to chase trout and ducks, but finds rich meaning, too, in the familiar and close-to-home: fishing with his children, plumbing the forests of local farms, and butchering deer in his basement as a thanksgiving for the gifts of the outdoors. When it comes to hunting and fishing, writing often falls into the categories of where-to-go, the how-do-it, and the-what-to-bring. This book embarks on the question of “why.” Why does the pursuit of game and fish, and the travel to the wild places where they thrive, bring meaning and clarity to living in the modern world? Why do we laugh more, and live more deeply, far from the sidewalk? If you’ve ever felt that way, you’ll find yourself in The Last Wild Road.

Community Across Time : Robert Morgan’s Words for Home by Rebecca Godwin
One of the first book-length studies of Robert Morgan, Community Across Time considers the Appalachian writer’s explorations of memory, family history, and landscape. It provides a study of all of Morgan’s fiction to date, as well as a chapter on his poetry and some reference, where appropriate, to his nonfiction. Rebecca Godwin examines the family history that informs much of this body of work, offering an extended biographical essay that ties characters and plot details to Morgan’s ancestors’ lives and to his own experiences growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Religious rifts, economic hardships, class conflicts, the place of women and Indigenous peoples, and the failure of humans to recognize the divinity of the natural world are among the motifs centering Morgan’s writing. Community across Time explores those themes as it looks to Morgan’s relationship to the Appalachian South.

Dirt Road Revival : How to Rebuild Rural Politics and Why Our Future Depends On It by Canyon Woodward and Chloe Maxmin
Through two successful elections in rural red districts that few thought could be won by a Democrat, twenty-somethings Maine state senator Chloe Maxmin (D-District 13) and campaign manager Canyon Woodward saw how the Democratic Party has focused for too long on the interests of elite leaders and big donors, forcing the party to abandon the concerns of rural America—jeopardizing climate justice, racial equity, economic justice, and more. Dirt Road Revival looks at how we got here and lays out a road map for progressive campaigns in rural America to build an inclusive, robust, grassroots politics that fights for equity and justice across our country. First, Maxmin and Woodward detail how rural America has been left behind. They explore rural healthcare, economic struggle, brain drain, aging communities, whiteness and racism, education access, broadband, Big Agriculture, and more. Drawing on their own experiences, they paint a picture of rural America today and pinpoint the strategic failures of Democrats that have caused the party to lose its rural foothold.