Maryland

Jill said, "I finished my Maryland read. It was a book called Two Brothers - One North, One South by David H. Jones. This book detailed Maryland's contribution, both Union and Confederate, to the American Civil War. Here is my review."

Walt Whitman feared that the real war would never get in the books: the true stories that depicted the courage and humanity of soldiers who fought, bled, and died in the American Civil War. Exceptionally researched and keenly accurate to actual events, along with the personages that forged them, David H. Jones's novel spans four years in the midst of America s costliest and most commemorated war. The journey is navigated by the poet, Walt Whitman, whose documented compassion for the wounded and dying soldiers of the war takes him to Armory Square Hospital in Washington, D.C., and finds him at the bedside of William Prentiss, a Rebel soldier, just after fighting has ended. As fate has it, William's brother, Clifton, a Union officer, is being treated in another ward of the same hospital, and Whitman becomes the sole link not just between the two, but with the rest of their family as well.

The reader is taken seamlessly from Medfield Academy in Baltimore, where the Prentiss family makes its home, to the many battlefields where North and South collide, and even through the drawing rooms of wartime Richmond, where Hetty, Jenny, and Constance Cary are the reigning belles.

David H. Jones, author of this book, was born and raised in West Virginia. He has been a lifelong student of the Civil War. His research took him into the swamps of Dinwiddie County, Virginia, to rediscover the lost location where a pivotal event in the book took place.

Bonnie adds: "Two Brothers: One North, One South by David H. Jones won't be published until February, so you must have an advance reading copy, Jill, right? This synopsis has me interested already ... because my grandmother was born in Dinwiddie County, Virginia."

Alaska

Sharon said, "Alaska ... I'd like to suggest books by the author Sue Henry for a read from Alaska. They are mysteries about the musher Jessie Arnold." Bonnie added, "Sharon has chosen to read Deadfall by Sue Henry, so let's take a look at that one."

Iditarod musher Jessie Arnold is being stalked and terrorized by an anonymous enemy. First, one of her sled dogs is badly injured in a steel trap and an ominous note leaves no doubt that the trap was set with malicious intent. Threatening phone calls and unsigned messages follow -- pressing Alaska State Trooper Alex Jensen to urge Jessie to go into hiding while he tries to track down the source of the threats. Finally, a near fatal car crash convinces Jessie to let Alex fly her to an isolated island more than two hundred miles away.

There on desolate, windswept Kachemak Bay, Jessie hikes the island trails with her lead dog Tank, marveling at the splendor of her solitude. But in a wilderness filled with hazards and hiding places, she soon discovers she is not alone. With Alex searching for a madman hundreds of miles away, Jessie is on her own ... playing a deadly game of hide and seek with a killer.

North Carolina

Jill said, "I just finished my official NC book for this challenge: On Agate Hill by Lee Smith (review). It was a wonderful look into North Carolina's history from the plantation life after the Civil War and mountain life around the turn of the century.

A dusty box discovered in the wreckage of a once prosperous plantation on Agate Hill in Nnorth Carolina contains the remnants of an extraordinary life: diaries, letters, poems, songs, newspaper clippings, court records, marbles, rocks, dolls, and bones. It's through these treasured mementos that we meet Molly Petree. Raised in those ruins and orphaned by the Civil War, Molly is a refugee who has no interest in self-pity. When a mysterious benefactor appears out her father's past to rescue her, she never looks back. Spanning half a century, On Agate Hill follows Molly’s passionate, picaresque journey through love, betrayal, motherhood, a murder trial—and back home to Agate Hill under circumstances she never could have imagined.

To read an excerpt, click here.