There's definitely something about Mary Monroe. Her first book THE UPPER ROOM was published more than twenty years ago in 1985. But she didn't publish her second novel GOD DON'T LIKE UGLY until 2000, years and tons of rejection letters later. The book went on to sell 250,000 copies and since then, Monroe has published five novels including GOD STILL DON'T LIKE UGLY and last year's New York Times bestselling novel GOD DON'T PLAY.

Her highly-anticipated DELIVER ME FROM EVIL drops at the end of the month. The book follows Christine Thurman, a woman from the wrong side of the tracks who made good by marrying Jesse Ray Thurman and helping him to build a business worth millions. Twelve years later, J.R. has become obsessed with his video store empire, and Christine feels trapped and alone in a dead-end marriage. Tempted by her old haunts and the people she thought she left behind long ago, Christine begins a sultry affair and becomes involved with a scheme so risky that it promises to deliver everything she could possibly want, or shatter the lives of everyone close to her. About DELIVER ME FROM EVIL, Publishers Weekly declared, "Bestseller Monroe delivers what could be her wildest and most entertaining novel yet.""A lot of my material is autobiographical," Monroe says about her work. With that said, here are some interesting facts about the women behind the bestselling books:

-She worked in the cotton fields as a child.
-Her sharecropper family punished her for reading too much.
-She had to borrow reading material from white families her relatives worked for.
-She was the first in her family to finish high school. She never attended college or received formal writing training.
-Advice from writers Alice Walker, Ann Rice, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison encouraged her to write.
-She says that her first trip inside a library was "a glimpse of heaven."
-She persisted in her passion for words despite being told it was "contrary to the Lord's ways."

The "something" about Mary Monroe, could quite possibly be her tenacity to embrace her love for writing despite naysayers and circumstances.

After checking out DELIVER ME FROM EVIL, look for her tenth novel, SPIRIT IN THE DARK, in September 2008.