Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind - The Friday 56 and Book Beginnings on Friday

 

     Miss Julia is a straight-laced Southern lady (in her 60s?) with a strong sense of what's proper and what isn't, a pillar of her small town's First Presbyterian Church, and a recent widow. But it isn't long before her late husband's mistress and illegitimate son show up on her front porch. Told with humor and a Southern voice, this book is the story of how Miss Julia copes with this situation, as well as deals with a hypocritical minister, crooked televangelist, kidnapping, and other surprises that surface.   
     Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind is the first book in a series of fifteen. I've read six or seven of them and although each book stands alone, they're more enjoyable if read in sequence.


Book Beginning:
I'd just caught my breath after the shock of my husband's sudden passing when his last legacy showed up on my front porch. We'd buried Wesley Lloyd Springer some few months before that hot, still morning in August, and I hoped I was through signing forms and meeting with lawyers and shuffling through various and sundry legal papers. I declare, this business of dying has more legal aspects to it than you would think. The deceased never knows what you have to go through to get his affairs in order, and Wesley Lloyd's were in as much order as they could get. I thought.

The Friday 56 (from 56% on my Kindle):
[Miss Julia is describing Pastor Ledbetter's secretary.]
She liked to make out like she was so professional, but she was the biggest gossip I knew. That's why she liked her job, since every Presbyterian in trouble sooner or later ended up talking to the preacher. I'd warned Pastor Ledbetter about her talkative tendencies, but he'd just patted my shoulder and told me he'd take care of it. Ever since then she'd flounced herself around anytime I was in her office, not that anybody with all that weight ought to do any flouncing.

Genre: Women's Fiction / Humor
Length: 273 Pages (Trade Paperback)
Amazon Link: Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind
Author's Website: Ann B. Ross

Synopsis (from Goodreads):
      Miss Julia, a recently bereaved and newly wealthy widow, is only slightly bemused when one Hazel Marie Puckett appears at her door with a youngster in tow and unceremoniously announces that the child is the bastard son of Miss Julia's late husband. Suddenly, this longtime church member and pillar of her small Southern community finds herself in the center of an unseemly scandal - and the guardian of a wan nine-year-old whose mere presence turns her life upside down.
      With razor-sharp wit and perfect "Steel Magnolia" poise, Miss Julia speaks her mind indeed - about a robbery, a kidnapping, and the other disgraceful events precipitated by her husband's death. Fast-paced and charming, with a sure sense of comic drama, a cast of crazy characters, and a strong Southern cadence, Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind will delight readers from first page to last.

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