"Topsail Island: Mayberry By The Sea" - After a week-long vacation on Topsail Island, Ray McAllister went home and wrote a newspaper column about the place where everyone goes 10 miles per hour under the speed limit. This column in The Richmond Times-Dispatch brought a deluge of responses from his readers who shared his appreciation for this barrier island off the coast of North Carolina.

As if caught in a time warp, Topsail resembles the resorts of decades past. It has the small-town feel of a family beach, a place with few commercial trappings whose devotees return generation after generation.

McAllister blends interviews with the people who know the island with stories of early pirates, devastating hurricanes, a 1940s dig in search of a 1630 Spanish galleon’s treasure, the U.S. government’s secret rocket program, a modern-day sea-turtle preservation project, and a black bear that came to stroll the beach.

In this book, Ray McAllister tells the many stories of Topsail with the help of those who love the island best.

See: www.MayberryByTheSea.com.

Update:  News Talk Radio WAAV of Wilmington has selected "Topsail Island: Mayberry by the Sea" as Book of the Month for August. (www.980waav.com).

"Topsail Island: Mayberry by the Sea" has just announced that it has now gone into it’s second printing! Congratulations, Ray!

Photograph by Vicki McAllister

About the author:

Author Ray McAllister has been a columnist for The Richmond Times-Dispatch since 1988. "Topsail Island: Mayberry By The Sea" resulted from a column he wrote in August 2005 and the reader response to it. This is his second book. A collection of his columns was published in 1995.

If you are a North Carolina author or have published a book about North Carolina, and would like to be listed, please email:  editor@topsailpublishing.com