Deserialized <file_name> into a Python object
    :param str|unicode file_name: The name of the file to read
    :param default: The value to return if the file is not found

def load_json_object(file_name, default=None):
    """
    Deserialized <file_name> into a Python object
    :param str|unicode file_name: The name of the file to read
    :param default: The value to return if the file is not found
    """
    if not os.path.isfile(file_name):
        return default

    # use utf-8-sig in case the file has a Byte Order Mark
    with codecs.open(file_name, 'r', 'utf-8-sig') as in_file:
        # read the text from the file
        content = in_file.read()

    # convert Windows line endings to Linux line endings
    content = content.replace('\r\n', '\n')

    # return a deserialized object
    return json.loads(content)