Margaret Maron Shares Her Latest Mystery, Hard Row
On UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch, Friday, August 31, at 9:30 PM

Multiple award winner of the most prestigious prizes for mystery fiction, Margaret Maron is back with a novel on a hot-button issue—immigrant workers—featuring her critically acclaimed (and newly married) fictional super-sleuth, Judge Deborah Knott.

In Hard Row, Knott presides over a case involving a barroom brawl, where it becomes clear that deep resentments over race, class, and illegal immigration are simmering just below the surface in the countryside. An early spring sun has begun to shine like a blessing on the fertile fields of North Carolina, but along with the seeds sprouting in the thawing soil, violence is growing as well. Mutilated body parts have appeared along the back roads of Colleton County, and the search for the victim's identity and for that of his killer will lead Deborah and her new husband, Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant, into the desperate realm of undocumented farm workers exploited for cheap labor.

In an all-new episode of UNC-TV’s local literary series North Carolina Bookwatch with D.G. Martin, premiering Friday, August 31, at 9:30 PM, Maron shares the facts behind her latest fiction offering and the surprises that come from this, the thirteenth novel of her long-running Judge Deborah Knott series.

"For the first twelve years of my professional life, it never occurred to me that I could write books. I was totally intimidated by the long form. But circumstances prevailed. The short story market dried up in the late '70s and I backed into the novel by doubling a short story three separate times until I finally had enough pages to call it a book,” says Maron. "Since then, I've done it [many] more times, yet I'm still intimidated and still face each new book with the fear that I won't be able to pull it off again."

Don’t miss DG Martin’s all-new interview with Margaret Maron on North Carolina Bookwatch, Friday, August 31, at 9:30 PM, with an encore episode airing Sunday, September 2, at 5 PM, only on UNC-TV!

During the 20-week, 10th anniversary season of North Carolina Bookwatch, guests also include: J. Peder Zane (The Top Ten), Gov. Michael Easley (Look Out, College, Here I Come!), Michele Bowen (Holy Ghost Corner), Neal Thompson (Driving With the Devil), Joseph Bathanti (Coventry), Joanna Catherine Scott (The Road From Chapel Hill), James Dodson (Beautiful Madness), Dan Heath (Made To Stick), James Peacock (Grounded Globalism: How the U.S. South Embraces the World), Tim Madigan (I’m Proud of You), Melton McLaurin (The Marines of Montford Point), Kathryn Stripling Byer (Coming to Rest), David Guy (Jake Fades),  Georgann Eubanks (Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains), Zelda Lockhart (Cold Running Creek), Mike Lassiter (Our Vanishing Americana: A North Carolina Portrait), Joe and Terry Graedon (Best Choices from the People’s Pharmacy), Fred Hobson (Off the Rim), and William Powell (Encyclopedia of North Carolina).

For additional information about series guests and airdates, plus links to the Bookwatch blog and online book club, please visit: www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

Funding for North Carolina Bookwatch is provided by UNC-TV members and by Quail Ridge Books and Music, Raleigh’s independent, full service bookstore, bringing readers and writers together since 1984.

North Carolina Bookwatch is part of UNC-TV’s ongoing commitment to produce programs for and about North Carolina. UNC-TV is the statewide 11-station broadcast network of the University of North Carolina. For more information, please visit www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

For more information about North Carolina Bookwatch and UNC-TV’s other original productions, please visit our website at www.unctv.org.

—UNC-TV—