Milicent Le Sueur by Margaret Moseley

Blurb:

Millicent Le Sueur is an eccentric, obsessive-compulsive bag lady in a rural Southern town who witnesses the hit-and-run killing of a teenage girl. Or so she claims. Some townsfolk believe she killed the girl and made up the story to cover her crime. Battling her neuroses and psychoses, and counting her steps along the way, she tracks a killer she hopes won’t count her as the next victim.

About the Author:

Margaret Moseley was born in Oklahoma, reared in Texas and lived twenty years in Arkansas. Her resulting combined regional accent gives a unique flavor to her protagonist Bonita Faye’s trials and tribulations in her best-selling book and Edgar finalist Bonita Faye. While the reader knows from the “get-go” that Bonita Faye killed Billy Roy up there on Cavanal Hill, it’s a toss-up as to how she will spend the next forty years. Told in the first person, readers will laugh and gasp as Bonita Faye deliberately weaves and molds her future with the book’s climax having her face another murderous decision!

Moseley writes very different mysteries, but whether her books involve a witness to a murder—Milicent LeSueur—or follow the sleuthing of Texas bookseller Honey Huckleberry—The Fourth Steven; Grinning In His Mashed Potatoes; A Little Traveling Music, Please—her writing is creative, whimsical and entertaining. Moseley currently lives in Texas with her writer/computer programmer husband Ron Burris and their two indescribable rescued beagles, Matilda and Sadie.

Review:

There but for the Grace of God and the Goddess… Being bi-polar and somewhat OCD, I’ve been a type of homeless called “sofa-surfing.” That’s where you migrate from one friend or family member’s home to the next. Milicent Le Seuer took her last name from a can of peas, walked out of her back yard one day, accumulated a collection of color-coded bags, and found herself a spot in an empty lot. Somehow, each month, money appears under a rock on “her” lot, and she cleans the restrooms at the local KFC for free food. Milicent prides herself on being a bag lady, and does not consider herself homeless. She has her lot with two trees and the rock, she has her “job” at KFC, last year the sheriff arranged for her to winter in a hospital, and this year she plans to winter with a wealthy lady who lives in town. But everything changes when she witnesses the hit and run death of a young girl, and she believes the driver is after her.

Ms. Moseley takes us on an incredible ride, as Milicent tries to remember just who and what she saw that day, and then when she does figure out who did it, tries to get people to believe her. Like so many mentally ill people, Milicent is smarter than average, and somehow manages to stay one step ahead of the murderer, who underestimates her. After all, she’s just a crazy bag lady.

This is the second book I’ve read by Ms. Moseley, and she writes delightfully quirky characters who make you laugh, cry, and gasp. Her books are impossible to put down once you start reading them, so make sure you have plenty of time when you pick up Milicent Le Seuer. And if your store carries that brand of peas, you’ll never look at them the same way again!

Author Website:  https://www.amazon.com/Margaret-Moseley/e/B000APUDKC

Warnings:  None

Length:  196 Pages

Prices:

Print:  $11.99

Digital:  $4.99

Buy Link:  http://www.brash-books.com/book/milicent-le-sueur-coming-in-november-2016/

You’ll notice we always include the publisher’s buy link. That’s because authors usually receive 40-50% of the net proceeds from the publisher. Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%. When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left. So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40-$2.99. If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $1.70-$2.10.

Download the file from the publisher onto your computer as you would any other file. I’ve created a folder for books on my computer, with subfolders by source (Marketing for Romance Writers, Net Galley, Authors who find me on Kindle lists, etc.). That way, if there’s a glitch with your Kindle, the books are on your computer. Some publishers send books in all digital formats. If my Kindle breaks and my kids buy me a Nook, I won’t have to replace all of my books. If you have a Kindle and your hubby has a Nook, you won’t have to buy separate copies, so buying directly from the publisher can save you money.

Moving the file from your computer to your e-reader is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive. Plug the larger USB end of your e-reader charging chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from the folder into which you’ve downloaded the book to Documents/Books directory on your e-reader. You can move the file by highlighting it and dragging it to the documents directory in you Kindle you want to move it to. Or right click on it, and then left click copy or move. Or hit Control/C for copy, Control/X for cut, and Control/V for paste.

Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement.

Thanks for visiting.

All These Perfect Strangers by Aiofe Clifford

Blurb:

“This is about three deaths. Actually more, if you go back far enough. I say deaths but perhaps all of them were murders. It’s a grey area. Murder, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.”

Within six months of her arrival at a university campus, three of Penelope Sheppard’s new friends are dead. And only Pen knows why. This isn’t Pen’s first encounter with violence, and she’s an expert at keeping secrets—especially ones as dark and dangerous as her own.

Reputations have a way of haunting you—they’re easy to make, hard to shake. After Pen leaves her isolated hometown to escape the judgmental stares of her neighbors and carve out a new identity for herself, she’s free from the stigma of her past mistakes. At school, Pen is anonymous, surrounded by an eclectic collection of perfect strangers. But when someone begins to uncover the deadly secrets she thought she’d left behind, how far will Pen go to protect her new life?

Six months later, Pen is back home, the victim of a violent trauma and a pariah once again. Now, reluctantly, she must recount her story from start to finish: to her shrink, to the police, even to herself. Because until she tells the whole truth, there will be no escaping the past.

About the Author:

Aoife Clifford is the author of the novel All These Perfect Strangers, published in Australia (March 2016) and the United Kingdom (August 2016) by Simon & Schuster. It will be published by Penguin Random House in the United States (July 2016). It is available as an audiobook from Bolinda Audio.

Born in London of Irish parents, Aoife grew up in New South Wales, studied Arts/Law at the Australian National University, Canberra, and now lives in Melbourne.

She has won two premier short story prizes for crime fiction in Australia—the Scarlet Stiletto (2007) and the S.D. Harvey Ned Kelly Award in 2012, among other prizes. She has also been short listed for the UK Crime Association’s Debut Dagger. In 2014 she was awarded an Australian Society of Authors mentorship for her novel, All These Perfect Strangers.

Review:

I couldn’t quite decide whether or not I trusted Penelope Sheppard, and therefore, I couldn’t quite decide whether I liked her. She was a troubled child from a troubled home, who got into trouble with her best friend that culminated with the death of a cop, and the suicide of her friend. Then, when she arrives at university, people start dying around her. I was fairly certain Pen was not involved in the murders, but still, it took a long time for the whole story to unravel.

I think that’s the problem with All These Perfect Strangers. It takes place over a semester of school, partly as told to Pen’s shrink, partly as she remembers it, and it’s mixed with memories of the events leading up to the demise of the cop and her best friend’s suicide. And, it seemed to take that long to read it.

Furthermore, Ms. Clifford did not make it clear from the beginning the book took place in Australia. There was no hint in the blurb, and I was halfway through the book when she mentioned it was getting cold in April. I did a double-take, and went back a few pages to be sure I’d read right. Prior to that, I thought the book took place in England. A couple of chapters later, Ms. Clifford mentioned eucalyptus trees, and that confirmed it was in Australia. It would have helped to know what continent the book was on—indeed, what hemisphere it was in, much earlier.

Despite the somewhat slow pacing, not being sure of the heroine, and not realizing for half the book that it was in Australia rather than England, All These Perfect Strangers still held my attention. I did figure out much of what happened back home before Ms. Clifford revealed it, but I was surprised by “who dunnit” at school, and a couple of the details at home.

Just pick up the pace a bit, Ms. Clifford, and let people know where they are sooner. The blurb could maybe say, “…isolated outback town…” or “…isolated Australian town…,” and maybe the bus could travel through the outback, or New South Wales, or Queensland, or when she got to school maybe “the shrimp could have been gone from the barbie.” Something those of us reading up north could have identified with. Otherwise, All These Perfect Strangers is a pretty good read.

Author Website:  http://www.aoifeclifford.com/

Heat Rating:  R for Violence

Length:  416 Pages

Digital Price:  $3.99

Buy Link:  https://www.amazon.com/All-These-Perfect-Strangers-Novel-ebook/dp/B01A4ATVSW

Thanks for visiting.

Pale Highway by Nicholas Conley

Blurb:

Gabriel Schist is spending his remaining years at Bright New Day, a nursing home. He once won the Nobel Prize for inventing a vaccine for AIDS. But now, he has Alzheimer’s, and his mind is slowly slipping away. When one of the residents comes down with a horrific virus, Gabriel realizes he is the only one who can find a cure. Encouraged by Victor, an odd stranger, he convinces the administrator to allow him to study the virus. Soon, reality begins to shift, and Gabriel’s hallucinations interfere with his work. As the death count mounts, Gabriel is in a race against the clock and his own mind. Can he find a cure before his brain deteriorates past the point of no return?

About the Author:

Nicholas Conley's passion for storytelling began at an early age, prompted by a love of science fiction novels, comic books and horror movies. When not busy writing, Nicholas spends his time reading, traveling to new places, and indulging in a lifelong coffee habit. In order to better establish himself on the planet Earth, Nicholas currently makes his home in New Hampshire. To learn more about him, take a stroll over to http://www.NicholasConley.com.

Review by Rochelle:

Pale Highway was a fascinating look at Gabriel Schist, a brilliant man losing his faculties to Alzheimer’s. It’s not an easy book to read, though, and if you have difficulty keeping up with books that go back and forth between the past and present, reality and delusion, then you might want to try something more straight-forward. But if you can bridge the gaps of a mind riddled with the Swiss-cheese holes of a disease that robs even our highest intellects of the ability to process the simplest thoughts, then Pale Highway is definitely a must-read.

A few years ago when I had more money and I was still able to pay my Mensa dues, I attended the Annual Gathering for both the US and Canada. There were thousands of us, and researchers gave a presentation on Alzheimer’s. Good thing the Fire Marshalls weren’t around, because we squeezed into that room like sardines. For us (as for anyone, really), Pale Highway is the ultimate horror story.

I’ve worked in a nursing home. Can you imagine Einstein in diapers having pureed mush shoveled into his mouth as fast as he can swallow it because the aid has nine other patients to feed before the trays go back? Can you imagine him being there and having lucid moments when he knows that’s what’s happening to him? Add the mystery of his friends dying around him, he knows he’s the only one who can stop it, and he knows he’s running out of time. Because his lucid moments are coming fewer and farther between. There you have the makings of a doozy of a book—Pale Highway.

Author Website:  http://www.NicholasConley.com

Heat Rating:  PG-13

Length:  317 Pages

Prices:

Print:  $11.99

Digital:  $5.99

Buy Links:

Print:  http://redadeptpublishing.com/#!/Pale-Highway/p/51236016

Digital:  http://www.amazon.com/Pale-Highway-Nicholas-Conley/dp/1940215536/

You’ll notice we always include the publisher’s buy link. That’s because authors usually receive 40-50% of the net proceeds from the publisher. Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%. When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left. So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40-$2.99. If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $1.70-$2.10.

Download the file from the publisher onto your computer as you would any other file. I’ve created a folder for books on my computer, with subfolders by source (Marketing for Romance Writers, Net Galley, Authors who find me on Kindle lists, etc.). That way, if there’s a glitch with your Kindle, the books are on your computer. Some publishers send books in all digital formats. If my Kindle breaks and my kids buy me a Nook, I won’t have to replace all of my books. If you have a Kindle and your hubby has a Nook, you won’t have to buy separate copies, so buying directly from the publisher can save you money.

Moving the file from your computer to your e-reader is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive. Plug the larger USB end of your e-reader charging chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from the folder into which you’ve downloaded the book to Documents/Books directory on your e-reader. You can move the file by highlighting it and dragging it to the documents directory in you Kindle you want to move it to. Or right click on it, and then left click copy or move. Or hit Control/C for copy, Control/X for cut, and Control/V for paste.

Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement.

Thanks for visiting.