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Diane Leslie is the author of the critically acclaimed and bestselling Fleur De Leigh’s Life of Crime and Fleur De Leigh In Exile. Raised by two accomplished but terribly spoiled parents along with sixty-one different nannies, she was destined to chronicle her childhood, inventing Fleur as her nom de couverture. |
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Born into a show-biz family, Ms Leslie found herself working as a television story analyst at the age of eighteen. An outlandish education, certainly, but the job proved she could read anything, evaluate it and write decent (if poorly spelled) critiques. Soon, however, she developed a yen to read actual literature. |
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The young story analyst escaped all things Hollywood for Europe. After living in Spain for a year, she returned to America on a small sailboat with her future husband. While following Columbus’s Trade Winds route, she read through two boxes of books, dropping nary a volume into the wine-dark brine. Eventually she married the sailor and settled down, in Los Angeles but not Hollywood, to raise two boys and write. |
| Her first novel, Fleur De Leigh’s Life of Crime, published by Simon and Schuster, introduces young Fleur’s world through three years of nannies. Chosen as a Best Book of 1999 by the Library Journal and the Los Angeles Times Book Review, and by the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers program, the charming novel became a national bestseller, prevailed on the Los Angeles Times Best Seller List for twenty-eight weeks, and is now a Scribner paperback. |  |
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Her second novel, the bestselling Fleur De Leigh In Exile, follows Fleur to an amusingly abominable boarding school chosen higgledy-piggledy by her parents. Also published by Simon and Schuster and now in paperback, this novel was selected as the Best Summer Read in 2004 by Los Angeles Magazine. |
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Additionally, Ms Leslie has won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction and written a story that aired nationwide on the NPR program Selected Shorts. She has reviewed books for The Boston Book Review and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. |
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| A partner in Dutton’s Brentwood Books and the new Dutton’s Beverly Hills Books, Ms Leslie hosts author readings, leads book groups and happily sells books in both stores. |
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To contact Ms Leslie, please send email to:
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