Celebrate the release of Topsail Island: Mayberry by the Sea with author Ray McAllister! This new edition offers more stories and pictures, making it the perfect book for beach fans.

“McAllister takes loving and telling recollections of Topsail — his and others — and mixes in history and vacation tips. … A worthy companion to take on your trip to the coast.” –The Charlotte Observer

An expanded and updated 2nd edition of Topsail Island: Mayberry by the Sea, by award winning coastal author Ray McAllister.

This new edition features larger pages and photographs, as well as more than 100 pages of new material – plus a foreword by renowned author Diane Chamberlain. The award-winning Topsail Island shares the history, people and continuing allure of the beloved North Carolina island with the small-town feel. Here are stories of the island’s top-secret missile program, the mysterious “Gold Hole,” and monster hurricanes Hazel, Bertha, and Fran. Here are giant sea turtles, and a traveling bear, plus old-time fishing piers and beach cottages with whimsical names. Here are vacationers, picture takers, surfers and fishermen, and musicians. The new edition adds the story of the iconic Swing Bridge and its replacement by a sweeping modern bridge, the devastation brought by Hurricane Florence and a pair of large fires, and the continuing “Topsail” feel nourished by small-town shops and festivities. Here, too, is an expanded story of the historic Ocean City “Black beach,” and newly presented stories of the massive whale carcass dragged to Topsail’s shores, an unexpected tornado, and the century-old mystery of the captain found inside his wrecked ship, a bullet through his head.

Ray McAllister is a former columnist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and former editor of Boomer magazine, in Richmond, Va. He also is the author of Topsail Island: Mayberry by the Sea; Wrightsville Beach: The Luminous Island, and Ocracoke: The Pearl of the Outer Banks, award winners all. Most recently, he is the author of The Forum Files: The Stories Behind The Richmond Forum. A second edition of Topsail Island will publish in March 2021. Through Beach Glass Book, Ray also publishes the works of other writers.

Topsail Island with Ray McAllister