Just Published!
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Announcing!
Finding The OBX
Uncovered Stories from The Outer Banks and Northeast North Carolina
By Award-Winning Journalist
KIP TABB
Publishing Sept. 2, 2025
$30.00, Hardcover, 300 pages,
ISBN 979-8999712103
The Outer Banks
You Only THOUGHT You Knew
Learn the real stories of North Carolina’s legendary Outer Banks — and their hidden history.
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WITH FREE SHIPPING!
Pick up a copy at your favorite Outer Banks bookseller.*
*Other booksellers, please contact Beach Glass Books to carry.
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The Outer Banks, like much of northeastern North Carolina, has hosted a remarkable historical pageant.
Now award-winning writer Kip Tabb has brought together all the tools to unearth the stories. Combining an historian’s research ability, a journalist’s interviewing skills, and a talented writer’s story-telling, he shines a light on sometimes hidden events and the often heroic people behind them. We meet war heroes and suspected traitors, entrepreneurs and fraudsters, and brave rescuers who risked—and too often lost—their lives to save passengers aboard sinking and sometimes fiery ships.
We meet Joachim Gans, the New World’s first practicing Jew, whose research found important metal deposits. There’s Reginald Fessenden, whose broadcasts from the Outer Banks helped kick-start radio. There’s Dexter Stetson, designer of three of the nation’s most famous lighthouses, and William Tate, an
important friend to the Wright Brothers. And Rad Tillett, a grand old storyteller who helps keep the past alive.
Oh, and Blackbeard of course.
What really was behind his killing?
We learn about a failed Colonial development on Colington Island and an enormous fraud in Buffalo City. We see what happened when eastern North Carolina was a key player in Civil Rights and what happened when Coastal North Carolina was the front line in the Battle for the Atlantic in World War II. We’re there for a massive pandemic, historic fires, and devastating hurricanes.
In short, this is the Outer Banks we only thought we knew. This is the book we’ve been waiting for.
Scenes from the book launch party for “Finding The OBX”
Glenn Eure Ghost Fleet Art Gallery, Nags Head, N.C.
Author Kip Tabb addresses the overflow crowd and signs copies of the new book.
Publisher Ray McAllister of Beach Glass Books and Tabb’s daughter, Maiah Savage, also spoke. McAllister presented Tabb with a framed printer’s proof of the book’s dust jacket.
Photographs by Vicki McAllister
Writer Kip Tabb talks about ‘Finding The OBX’
Outer Banks Voice
Writer and journalist Kip Tabb’s new book, ‘Finding The OBX,’ bears the subtitle “Uncovered Stories from The Outer Banks and Northeast North Carolina.” Published by Beach Glass Books, Finding The OBX is a collection of his years of work covering the stories that tell the history of this region.
A regular contributor to the Outer Banks Voice, Tabb responded to questions from the Voice about the making and the message of the book, with the conversation presented in the Q&A format below.
Q: What made you decide to put this book together and how long had it been in the works?
A: My brother suggested three or four years ago that, looking over the historical articles I had written since about 2005, there may be enough material for a book. . .