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Ms. Vaughn holds a BS degree in art form East Carolina University in Greenville, NC, AND SHE STUDIED ART HISTORY AND Italian at Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy while supervising a study program their under the auspices of Columbia University. She currently resides in Raleigh, North Carolina.
New Berne is the Athens of the South in antebellum North Carolina. Fortuitously situated on a point of land between two rivers, it is a thriving port city blessed with good climate and natural beauty. Fortunes are to be made by those with the acumen to seize the advantages of location and the vision to foresee the opportunities looming war will bring. Graham LaRoque has both the skill and foresight to build a shipping empire. Success in his personal life has proven more elusive. Frustrated by a lustful but contemptuous relationship with his wife, his vivacious daughter is his greatest blessing. Born to privilege in a loveless home, Cecilia LaRoque, struggles with the pain of a mother’s rejection. Not even her father’s devotion can scotch the longing for a mother that plagues her childhood leaving her doubtful of her own worth. When Monique LaRoque abandons Graham LaRoque and her child to return to her Parisian roots and dissolute lover, Marcel Lambert, Graham and Cissy forge a new life without her carping presence. Evangeline Forrest, the gentle widow next door, finds a place in Cissy’s life and soon owns Graham LaRoque’s heart as well. Bound by honor and religion to a marriage he no longer wants, Graham forces himself to maintain a respectful distance, even knowing that his feelings are reciprocated. Cissy’s childhood friend, Logan Gwaltney, is a determined suitor, but one that Cissy rejects. Familiarity and years of childhood romping make him more brother than her romanticized vision of a would-be lover. Undaunted by rejection he doggedly pursues her. Following the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, the lovely young girl is thrust into a world where balls and frivolity are soon replaced by the perils of enemy occupation. Longing for a chance to find purpose for her life beyond the role assigned to women of polite society, the outbreak of war provides Cissy the opportunity to venture beyond the strictures that bind women to hearth and home, if she but dares to grasp it.
"I just finished reading Run, Cissy, Run and enjoyed it a lot. I like that there is southern history as well as the story, as a lot of it I do not know.”
“Run, Cissy, Run is a great book. Trust me, you will not want to put it down.”
The War Between the States comes to eastern North Carolina bringing hardships, pillaging, and fear to the local residents. For those left at home the struggle to procure the needs of daily life is all-consuming. For those serving in the armies of both North and South death is a daily companion. Against this backdrop an unlikely and forbidden love affair between a local woman and a Union officer leads to difficult choices---choices that will tear them apart and force them to deal with the abandonment of their dream of a life together. Despite broken hearts, misunderstandings and missed chances, Penny and Ryan strive to survive the dangers and ravages of war and make the best of their separate futures. With the surrender of the South at Appomattox, Penny realizes she has one last chance to either find the man she loves or settle for life without him.
I read Man in the Chimney and loved it. What a beautiful romance Penny and Ryan enjoyed! I look forward to reading the next in the series.
I read The Man in the Chimney and Turbulent Waters. My favorite part was the author’s descriptions of the things the people lived through and how they coped.
Love is personal, war is not, especially in North Carolina, 1865-1867, during the reconstruction. With a love they are certain will transcend all else, southern belle Penny Kennedy marries Union Officer and attorney, Ryan Madison, despite the condemnation of those around them. The initial days of wedded bliss end abruptly when Marcus, the man who courted Penny for years in anticipation that she would marry him, is arrested for murder, and Ryan is assigned to prosecute him. As hard as this development is to tolerate for Penny, she will discover worse things await her before Ryan and she can attain the life they desire.
I read Man in the Chimney and loved it. What a beautiful romance Penny and Ryan enjoyed! I look forward to reading the next in the series.
I read The Man in the Chimney and Turbulent Waters. My favorite part was the author’s descriptions of the things the people lived through and how they coped.
When Wilmington falls in February of 1865, Cissy LaRoque no longer needs to spy. That will not stop her from finding a new career where she can prove her worth beyond the expected role of wife and mother. With the war drawing to an end and faced with desperate circumstances, Ryan Madison, a Union officer from the past, and Brandon McLean, a new one, try to help her. While attracted to them both, she is aware of family and community hostilities toward the enemy and dares not act on the attraction. Her fiancé, Logan who is fighting for the southern cause, does not arouse her passions like the two Union men. When the Confederacy falls, she convinces her father to allow her to run his shipping office in New Berne while he maintains the main office in Wilmington. There she discovers Ryan has married. Provoked and titillated by a man she cannot have but craves, she puts aside romance and concentrates on business. Despite her father’s initial objections, much to his surprise she succeeds far beyond any expectation. Although she is happy in what she has achieved, she is frustrated by what she has lost. Logan has jilted her, as he cannot face her after being maimed in war and has moved to California. There he discovers the evil Marcel Lambert did not die as he thought when he shot him and left him for dead in Dover Swamp. Marcel is determined to exact retribution on both Logan and Cissy, but at the moment is focused on building his wealth gambling. Murder and robbery are me
Yesterday’s Magnolia. “It’s a shame to have so damned much and yet so little.” An eastern North Carolina farmer’s daughter, Margot, streaks like a comet, into the life style of the rich and famous. Her beauty and exuberant, zestful personality gain her entrance to boardrooms, the White House, a corporate jet stocked with Cristal champagne and caviar, a villa in Italy, and marriage to one of the world’s most powerful men. Maurice, the spurned suitor, seeks friendship and comfort from Margot’s sister, Jo, a quiet, bookish art history teacher. Jo envies them both for their ready charm, looks, wealth, glamour, and exciting lives, never realizing that it is she who is envied, for a life that contains the things that they themselves have not attained. Like the comets they so resemble both Margot and Maurice are consumed by the friction of life, leaving Jo to remember the magic moments they brought to a more conventional path.
Quint Cord returns to the CIA when his fiancée is almost killed by an egomaniacal hacker who is determined to use his GPS satellite-implanted virus to gain control of governments and transportation networks around the globe. Aided by a North Korean dissident who vows to bring down the Kim Jong Un regime, the hacker uses the North Korean’s information to crash ships and missiles in Korea and Japan. The hacker next turns to his own country of China to create friction with the United States. When the North Korean becomes frightened for his life and defects, the hacker flees China for fear he will be exposed. Lila Carson, Quint’s fiancée, is again on the trail of the hacker as he changes IP addresses to elude discovery. From North Carolina to Japan and China, and then to Seattle, Quint struggles to capture the man before he can commit more murder and chaos.
Quint Cord is an unlikely spy. With sufficient family money that he never needs to work he could have spent his life idling on a beach chasing women. But from the moment he discovers the famous codes of the past in a university history class, he is hooked. His unique talent for creating and breaking codes brings him to the attention of the CIA. His latest assignment is proving to be his most challenging and could well lead to catastrophic events if he does not break the code in time to avert them. A powerful and ambitious politician, in cahoots with a Saudi Prince, plans to seize the Presidency and throw the Western World into turmoil. Quint flees the country only to stay one step ahead of a foe determined to kill him before he can break the code. Clue by clue, Quint begins to zero in on his target but can he stop him in time?
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