Margaret Lashley Books In Order

Publication Order of Doreen Diller Mystery Books

Publication Order of Freaky Florida Mystery Adventures Books

Publication Order of Interesting Stories for Curious Minds Books

Publication Order of Mind's Eye Investigations Books

Publication Order of Val Fremden Mysteries Books

Publication Order of Val Fremden Strikes Again Books

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Margaret Lashley is a bestselling author, aficionado of the absurd, and lover of laughter. As an author, she is best known for publishing the “Freaky Florida” and “Val Fremden” series of novels.
She has also written thrilling psychological suspense works particularly in the “Mind’s Eye Investigators” series.

With her novels, she has become known for having an obsession with underdogs since she believes that it takes an underdog to know another underdog.

Like many of her characters, she was not born into wealth and in fact, lived in a home in which her parents often struggled to provide the essentials for her and her siblings.

The author was born and brought up in Florida the Sunshine State and growing up, she survived on a diet of the weird. One of the things her upbringing gave her was extensive knowledge of redneck culture which often seeps into her writing.
Most of Margaret Lashley’s novels have been compared to the works of the likes of Janet Evanovich.

Similar to Evanovich’s works, her novels are upbeat and funny and come with a depth of character that will have you either cringing or rooting for the characters from the first page to the last.

During her illustrious career, Margaret Lashley did all manner of jobs before she became a successful fiction author.

She was at one time a truth seeker/traveling vagabond, roller-skating waitress, organic farmer, actuarial assistant, house flipper, real estate agent, and advertising copywriter.

Nonetheless, she always felt like a weirdo just about any place she has gone or whatever she did. Her many endeavors have provided a lot of learning opportunities but getting to know herself has to be the best.
Today she knows herself to be smart, funny, direct, hopeful, and jaded, even if she sometimes is a pushover. In essence, Margaret Lashley is a jumble of opposing emotions, flaws, and talents.
She believes she is a lover of the story of the underdog since she believes that everyone had hope, spunk, and secrets that make them very different from all other people.

She currently makes her home in St Petersburg, one of the sunniest cities in Florida.

Margaret Lashley got the inspiration to pen her novels since she is a huge lover of fabulously quirky characters and she just could not find such books.

The author grew up in the era of the likes of the “Carol Burnett Show,” “That Girl,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” and “Laverne and Shirley,” which had strong women as role models.

These were women that loved to put themselves out there and pursued their dreams in unique ways, which is sorely lacking in the contemporary world.

With Val Fremden the lead protagonist of her “Val Fremden” series, she intended to create a vulnerable yet strong character. She comes out as someone who is yet to get her act together and probably will never get it.
She is a survivor of a hard journey who bears her scars proudly and comes with her own quirky sense of humor and coping mechanisms.

Margaret writes to help her readers to remember to celebrate the absurd, the imperfect, and sometimes just everyday things.

In Margaret Lashley’s novel “Glad One,” we are introduced to Val who has just come back to Florida and the town of St. Petersburg.

She is recently divorced from her third husband who had been very abusive and comes back with nothing to her name and decides to sell her vehicle to get money for an apartment.
Her literary agent has been pressing her to write a manuscript but she just cannot do that since her self-esteem is down as she is still licking her wounds.

She heads to the beach where she meets Glad, an older woman who becomes her mentor and coach and helps her in dealing with the many challenges in life.

Glad has a great sense of sense and life and shares this with Val who soon sees her as less of a friend and more of a surrogate mother. Lashley pens her characters with a lot of sarcastic laugh-out-loud humor.
Through Glad, Val finds for herself several dysfunctional friends who would do anything for them.
It is a storyline with several threads that culminated in a surprise ending that will make you cheer, cry and laugh.

“Two Crazy” by Margaret Lashley is a work that asserts the truism that birthdays can be a real pain when you are approaching 50.

Val found herself in a lot of trouble when a finger is found on her coach and a very disagreeable detective cannot wait to lock her up.

She believed she was safe since she had a policeman boyfriend but he will not get involved as this is a very hot case. The good thing is that the police had not found the body but she still needs to resolve the case before it comes more complicated.
She teams up with her homeless pals to help figure out things. She has very low esteem and she will need the help of her friends and family to deal with all manner of challenges.

Some of the things she needs to deal with include a break-in, sketchy lawyers, lawsuits, and the efforts of a girlfriend seemingly determined to steal her boyfriend.

It is a satirical look into how life can sometimes cause chaos in your well-laid plans as told from the perspective of a middle-aged and very snarky woman with high original yet dubious coping skills and major turs tissues.

Margaret Lashley’s novel “Three Dumb” continues to follow Val who is a disaster-prone, jaded, and quirky but more than anything very wary of commitment.

When Tom her boyfriend declares that he is in love with her and seeks to help her by selling her RV, he just makes things worse.

He believed that he was helping her but he never realized that her mother’s ashes had been inside the RV and his actions leave her furious with him.
She goes to war with Tom which means she can only rely on her quirky friends to help track down her mother’s ashes.

However two disasters and three botched stakeouts later, she is more lost than ever Through trial and error she finally learns how to navigate the streets alongside her friends.
It is a satirical look at how life changes, particularly with regard to our perception of the things we value and love too.

Like all the novels of the series, it is told from the perspective of a middle-aged and snarky woman with a reluctance toward romance and massive commitment issues.