Books by Diane Leslie

Diane Leslie's first novel, Fleur de Leigh's Life of Crime, chronicled young Fleur Leigh's glamorous misadventures in 1950s Hollywood. "e;Trs charmant indeed,"e; Entertainment Weekly praised this Library Journal and Los Angeles Times Best Book of 1999.Fleur de Leigh in Exile finds fifteen-year-old Fleur in diminished circumstances. She transferred mid-semester to Tucson's Rancho Cambridge West -- the cheapest boarding school in all the United States -- where frail students convalesce in the arid clime and dine on the mess hall's "e;adobe melt."e; "e;Think of yourself as a conquistador,"e; her B-movie actress mother urges, but Fleur's eyes are widened to the evils of prejudice and the burdens of combating it.After a night of dorm-room high jinks, Fleur and friends band together as the "e;Four-Letter Four."e; Sentenced to a civic-minded punishment deep in the desert, the "e;doomed do-gooders"e; encounter a grave situation far removed from Fleur's upper-class upbringing. Serious issues abound, but in Diane Leslie's world even the most painful moments are tinged with comedy.Diane Leslie's writing is "e;enchanting, believable, and wickedly funny"e; (Denver Post). Witty and fresh, Fleur de Leigh in Exile pits Heartland against Hollywood in a tale whose courageous heroine is as endearing in exile as ever before.