Books
Hampstead’s David Dean Joins Fellow Southern Writers at 2023 Feast of Authors Luncheon
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The sold-out event held at Nineteen Restaurant featured presentations, Q&A, and book signings by Dean and Leah Weiss, Donna Everhart, J.G. Hetherton, Heather Bell Adams, and Nina de Gramont.
“The camaraderie and networking with such a great group of authors was amazing, as were the many conversations with the wonderful readers who we got the opportunity to visit with,” Dean said.
During his presentation, Dean discussed the genesis behind writing OBX, his action-packed murder/mystery novel set in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and the inspiration behind the strong female lead character Michael Francis. The State Bureau of Investigation agent and mother of three navigates dirty politicians, crooked cops, attempts on her life, crumbling marriage, unexpected romance, and a hurricane on her way to uncovering a serial killer who’s been operating in the shadows for years.
This is the first in a series of books featuring Michael Francis, one of the author’s complex characters who discover their true, authentic selves when faced with unforeseen challenges. Francis is set to appear in the follow-up sequel The Triangle coming out in Summer 2023.
OBX (ISBN: 979-8-218-00862-8) is available at bookstores and retailers like Quarter Moon Books as well as online at Amazon.com.
The other authors offered various takes on the process of writing as well as details on their backgrounds and their books:
Heather Bell Adams is the author of two novels, Maranatha Road and The Good Luck Stone. Maranatha Road won the gold medal for the Southeast region in the Independent Publisher Book Awards and was selected for Deep South Magazine’s Fall/Winter Reading List. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and O. Henry Award, Heather has won the Doris Betts Fiction Prize, Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Award, Carrie McCray Literary Award, and James Still Fiction Prize.
Nina de Gramont (also known as Marina Gessner) lives in coastal North Carolina with her husband, the writer David Gessner. She’s the author of the acclaimed Meet Me at the River, Every Little Thing in the World, Gossip of the Starlings, The Last September, as well as The Distance from Me to You, which has recently been optioned for a movie. Her latest novel is The Christie Affair.
J.G. Hetherton is the Audible bestselling author of Last Girl Gone, a Sun-Sentinel Top Debut Mystery of 2018, and What Lies Beneath, nominated for the 2023 Beltie Prize for Best Mystery.
Donna Everhart is the USA Today bestselling author of Southern fiction with authenticity and grit, including the Southeastern Library Association Award-winning The Road to Bittersweet. Her fifth novel, The Saints of Swallow Hill, was released in February 2022.
Leah Weiss is a southern writer living in Virginia. Her debut novel If The Creek Don’t Rise was released in 2017 and selected as a Library Reads, Indie Next and SIBA Okra Pick. It was honored as a 2018 finalist for the Library of Virginia’s Literary Fiction and People’s Choice Awards. Her second novel, All The Little Hopes was released in 2021 and was a Library Reads, BAM’s December 2021 book club choice, and named a Best Book for Fall 2021 by Country Living Magazine. It was a 2022 finalist for the Library of Virginia’s People’s Choice Award.
Dean’s novel OBX (ISBN: 979-8-218-00862-8) is set in the popular beach destination of North Carolina’s Outer Banks and introduces readers to NC State Bureau of Investigation Agent Michael Francis as she investigates the murder of an influential politician’s staffer, right in the middle of a campaign. The struggling mother of three finds herself in a gathering storm of cover-ups, crooked cops, drug trafficking, and attempts on her life while she deals with a difficult separation from her police detective husband. In the midst of unexpected and confusing romantic overtures from a prime suspect, an approaching hurricane threatens to sabotage her investigation as Michael chases down a serial killer who’s been operating in the shadows for years, facing human threats more dangerous than mother nature herself in a climactic ending with an unexpected twist.
For more information on David Dean, visit www.daviddeanwriter.com.
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Joe Reina has published a new novel, "Shadows over Scottsdale: An Unsolved Murder Mystery," built around a scenario true-crime statistics make uncomfortably familiar: a man commits a devastating crime and simply disappears, leaving investigators and a grieving community with no resolution.
The book follows a character named Robert, who flees the country using forged documents and a cargo ship after an act of destruction that leaves behind, as the publisher describes it, charred remains and an unanswered investigation. The case goes cold. The novel, according to its publisher, is less concerned with the mechanics of the escape than with what happens afterward, to the people left waiting for answers that never come.
Reina, now retired in Scottsdale, spent decades in international business across apparel, footwear, and real estate, with extensive time in Europe and a particular connection to Italy that shaped two earlier books, "The Goat Sleeps in the Kitchen" and "A Love Affair in Tuscany." "Shadows over Scottsdale" marks a different direction, built instead around the real scale of unsolved homicide in the U.S. The publisher’s materials cite roughly 346,000 unsolved homicides since 1965, with more than a dozen occurring unresolved each day. Separate reporting on the book has cited a figure of about 7,778 murders in 2023 alone, which it similarly frames as more than a dozen a day going unresolved.
"Writing ‘Shadows over Scottsdale’ forced me to confront uncomfortable questions about justice itself," Reina said, according to the announcement. "Too many crimes go unsolved, too many families wait endlessly for answers. I wanted readers to understand that behind every cold case statistic is a real story, real suffering, and real questions that may never be answered."
The publisher positions the novel as an examination of institutional limits as much as a crime story: the toll of a case gone cold on the people who can’t move past it, and what it means for a community when accountability simply never arrives.
"Shadows over Scottsdale" is published by Covenant Books and is available in paperback and hardcover through the publisher’s website and major retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.
Cold-case statistics tend to get cited and then forgotten. Studio CarryOnHarry is curious whether fiction built directly around that number does more to stick with a reader than the number alone ever does.
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According to the announcement, those three gifts come from Sandro Botticelli, Titian, and Andrea Mantegna, each painting standing in for a different kind of counsel. Botticelli’s piece is described as layered with allegory and coded warnings about power and patronage. Titian’s is framed as warm and sensual, suggesting reinvention and a break from convention. Mantegna’s is austere and classically precise, encoding discipline and endurance. According to the announcement, these three paintings form a wordless exchange between masters, transmitting wisdom, mutual regard, and assurance across generations through visual means.
Reina comes to this material from outside the art world. His career was built in apparel, footwear, and real estate development in Chicago, and the publisher’s materials trace his interest in European history, and in Italy specifically, to years of international business travel. He has published several previous books, including "The Goat Sleeps in the Kitchen," "A Love Affair in Tuscany," and "Shadows over Scottsdale," before turning to this account of a fictionalized moment at the hinge of the Renaissance.
"I wanted to capture that extraordinary moment when masters speak to each other across time through their work," Reina said in the announcement. "These paintings represent not just gifts, but a conversation about what it means to pursue greatness while remaining grounded in purpose and principle."
The book is published through Covenant Books and is available in hardcover and paperback, as well as through Apple Books, Amazon, Google Play, and Barnes & Noble.
Studio CarryOnHarry is intrigued by novels that build fiction around real historical figures at a specific, dramatized turning point rather than attempting straight biography — the approach succeeds or fails based on how seamlessly the fictional moment integrates with documented historical fact.
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