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.

Defective by Susan Sofayov

Blurb:

University of Pittsburgh law student, Maggie Hovis, battles an enemy she cannot escape—her own brain. Her family calls her a drama queen. Her fiancé, Sam, moves out after she throws a shoe at his head. Maggie knows there is only one way to get him back—control her moods. So she takes the step most of her family is against: therapy. After a diagnosis of Bipolar II Disorder, Maggie begins to investigate her family tree—which is plagued by mental illness and hidden relatives—and develops empathy for her deceased Great Aunt Ella, who lived her life in a mental institution. But Maggie’s journey leads her into fear and insecurity, afraid she’ll end up like Ella and never get Sam back. But what about Nick, her super-sexy old flame, who wants to reignite their passion? And does it even matter, anyway? Won’t mental illness stop any man from loving her?

Review by Rochelle Weber:

Being bi-polar and having gone through a couple of medicinal cocktails as well as several rounds on locked wards, I thought I knew a lot about my disease. But Ms. Sofayov has apparently done a lot more research than I have. In Defective I learned the meaning of a word I’d just drifted across and to which I had not paid much attention—hypomanic.

Like me, Maggie Hovis is a Bi-Polar 2 with Hypomania. Her disease does not manifest itself in long periods of great elation and creativity followed by long periods of deep depression bordering on catatonia. It shows up more as temper tantrums followed by abject apologies and then sleeping it off like an alcohol binge, and walking around like a zombie the rest of the time, sometimes taking to one’s bed, sometimes just wallowing on the couch with the TV on, sometimes managing to put one foot in front of the other when absolutely required to survive, but with one’s very own cloud surrounding one. Bi-polar 2’s have brief flashes of the happy, creative kind of mania during which they may go somewhere fun or start a project, but they rarely finish these things. Maggie’s boyfriend, Sam, referred to those times as “Beautiful Maggie.”

[My first “book” was actually a collection of first chapters. I had about 300 pages of the beginnings of books, most of which I threw away. Goodness, I wish I’d kept them, but when one is sofa-surfing homeless, one can only carry so much luggage. You can’t be a hoarder on your friends’ couches.]

Maggie also has voices in her head telling her people will find out what a fraud she is when she does something right, or chiding her when she doesn’t quite do something perfectly, just like mine. I just never realized they were part of my disease.

[“A 3.25 grade point average. Couldn’t make cum laude, could you? You’re a failure.” “Yeah, but to be fair, I did that one semester working full time while going to school in a wheel chair with my leg in a cast, and the CTA not-so-Special Services kept leaving me sitting in that cold corridor and caused me to miss three classes because they went to the wrong building in my office complex. If they’d missed me one more time, it would’ve been an automatic fail.” “Lame excuse for getting two Bs that semester if you ask us.” [My voices, not Maggie’s. I call them The Committee.)]

The information about the disease is woven into a search for Maggie’s family history, a manic obsession with getting her boyfriend back, and the reappearance of an old flame, all tempered with the words of her cousin. “Face it, Mags. We’re defective. No one’s ever going to love us.”

Well, I loved Maggie Hovis. She and her family were fascinating, well-drawn, three dimensional characters—even Aunt Ella who died before Maggie was born. The villain in Defective was one with whom I am all too familiar and Ms. Sofayof definitely did her homework to bring it to life in dazzling HD-3D. I could not put this book down, except when it took me into my own head and I stopped to ruminate about my own struggles with B-P 2 and hypomania.

Yes, Maggie, I loved you. Enough to give you five [Yes, 5! Ignore the Committee and just say “Thank you.”] Roses. Whether you’re bi-polar, living with someone who is, not related to but curious about the disease, or just looking for a good romance with real demons, Defective is a great read.

Length: 308 Pages

Prices:

Print: $11.53

Digital: $2.99

Buy Link: http://www.amazon.com/Defective-Susan-Sofayov/dp/1626941254/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1415256962&sr=8-1&keywords=Defective+%2B+Susan+Sofayov

Thanks for visiting. Rose, Julie, Donna, & Rochelle