Thanks to the Kindle Select program, I'm able to offer the Kindle edition of The MAFIA FUNERAL and Other Short Stories AND Can We Come In and Laugh, Too? for FREE download today only. The paperback editions of either of these would also make a great Mother's Day gift, because the gift of humor is always a winner. Tomorrow both of them go back to $2.99, so share this with your friends. The paperbacks are $9.99.
Stories in this book:
(Several won awards)
The Mafia Funeral.........................1
Sometimes life comes to an end far too soon. When
Eliot's friend died at the age of twenty-seven, his wife Susan found herself at
a Mafia funeral and wake, mistaken for the daughter of a Mafia Don. Based on a
true story.
How Much Worse Can It Get?...... 13
At age 42, Audrey is taking her first trip to
England with her friend Sue. What she imagined as a charming country cottage
turns out to be anything but that. However, Audrey and Sue have a completely
unexpected type of vacation despite the rocky start. Excerpted from the novel
“Confessions of a Cougar,” to be released in mid-2012.
Rip Off........................................25
Just when Stephen Rollins' future seems bleak, a
wealthy old woman named Annie comes into his life and everything turns around.
Not satisfied, he becomes greedy.
That’s What Friends Are For...39
Love is rediscovered after ten years during a
chance meeting. Will they allow themselves to accept it this time? After fate
steps in, the decision is no longer theirs. This story inspired Vince DeLuca’s
character in the novels Devil's Dance and The Devil's Due
The Second Time Around.....................51
Lillian and Frank have been
divorced for more than thirty years. After her fourth husband passes
away, she tracks Frank down, and what follows is hilarious… and true.
Saying Goodbye to Miss Molly..............63
Miss Molly has lived more years than most. As the
sun begins to set on her life, memories of a young love return.
To Catch a Russian Thief...or Two........77
Eighty-year-old Flossie and Sterling Silver are
being held by two bumbling Russian thugs. As their daughters race against time
to save them, the question is will they get there in time?
What Happened to Mandy Blake?........93
Mandy had been terribly wronged, and now she was
in an awful bind with no way out…or was she? She discovered retribution is
sweet.
Rosetta wrote this memoir in 1989 at the age of 80. It has just been published in both Kindle and paperback. She passed on only a few months before her 97th birthday, but now you can share her laughter. She was 95 on the cover photo.
Rosetta's life was filled with stories, both funny and heart-grabbing, but through all of it laughter lit the way.
Here is a little taste from Chapter Three, set in Chicago about 1919:
If I needed a new pair of shoes, my father took me to
a shopping section on the East side of Chicago called Maxwell Street. I loved
riding on the streetcar and always said hello to the conductor. There were so
many wonderful things to see at Maxwell Street. We looked at pushcart after pushcart
displayed in front of the stores, all laden with merchandise at bargain prices.
The men tending the pushcarts were called pullers. They tried their best to get
you into their stores to buy whatever they were selling.
When my father finally made up his mind about which
store to go into, the first thing he'd do was begin to dicker on the price. It didn't matter whether the
shoes fit right—the main thing was that they were a bargain. Sometimes
they were too big and I could have used a pair of oars to go with the shoes
because they were like gunboats. Sometimes they were too short, so my father made
a long cut at the toes to give me enough room. It didn’t matter to him as long
as he’d gotten a bargain. No wonder my toes are misshaped to this day.
While I’m talking about Maxwell Street, I want to tell
you a very funny incident. On one of my
father’s shopping sprees he bought a beautiful bowl. The inside was covered
with paintings of flowers. On the way home he told me, “Rose, this will make a
good soup bowl for me. It's big enough and Mother won't have to fill it twice.”
My dad really liked soup and I had to agree that the
bowl was very pretty. I remember telling him, “It sure was a good bargain,
Papa.”
Well, when he showed it to my mother and explained the reason he bought it, she
agreed it was a good buy and would mean less trips to the kitchen to refill it.
The next day my mother served him soup in his new bowl. When he finally got to
the end of the soup, guess what? He noticed that all the flowers were gone. He called
my mother over and pointed to the unadorned bowl. "Mathilda, look! Where
have the flowers gone?” My mother looked at the empty bowl, and sure enough,
the flowers had disappeared along with the soup. As disappointed as he was,
they both had a really good laugh. That is how my family was. They laughed when something went wrong
instead of complaining.
Folding beds were everywhere in our apartment. It was a little easier in the
summer months because all the folding beds were transferred to the back porch. It was sizzling hot indoors, so it was a pleasure to sleep
outside. There was one problem, though. When the milkman came early in the
morning, he couldn't get through to put the milk in the icebox.
My brother Phil, who slept right next to the banister,
solved that problem. He just reached over the banister and took the milk from
the milkman. Then he passed it to my other brothers, and the one closest to the
kitchen brought it into the apartment. The boys used to kid my mother. They
would say, "Ma, you’ll never have to worry about a burglar getting in here
because he would break a leg before getting into the kitchen.”
