Leslie Liautaud
Leslie Liautaud is the author of the coming-of-age novel BLACK BEAR LAKE (Blue Handle Publishing, 2022), which earned First Place in the Somerset Awards for Literary and Contemporary Fiction, and the psychological thriller BUTTERFLY PINNED (BHP, 2025).
She also wrote the plays Midnight Waltzes (2006), He Is Us (2008), The Wreck (2009), SALIGIA (2011), The Mansion (2012), Summer Nights and Dreams (2012), and the immersive play Southern Gothic (2018), which won multiple Jeff Awards in Chicago.
Leslie is originally from Kansas City, Missouri, where she worked in the performing arts. Currently, she resides in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband, Jimmy John Liautaud, their three children and four rambunctious dogs.
Books By
Leslie Liautaud
“A character-rich thriller of obsession, deceit, and redemption. ... Liautaud shows readers that breaking free is always worth the cost.”
From award-winning author Leslie Liautaud comes a chilling psychological thriller about friendship, obsession, and the price of reinvention.
Marin thought college would be her chance to start over—a new city, new friends, and a new life far from the shadows of her past.
Then she meets Bette, the effortlessly sophisticated and dangerously captivating girl who seems to have it all. Drawn into Bette's alluring world of privilege and power, Marin quickly finds herself seduced by the glamour, but beneath the surface lies something far more sinister.
As secrets unravel and dark truths emerge, Marin realizes she's entangled in a web of manipulation and deceit she never saw coming.
With her sense of reality crumbling and her safety on the line, she must make an impossible choice—stay silent and survive or speak out and risk everything.
“Liautaud delivers a wise and accomplished psychological novel ... will resonate with readers long after the final page is turned.”
Adam Craig still has nightmares about the last summer he spent on the shores of northern Wisconsin's black bear lake.
The Chicago stock trader thinks he has it under control, until fallout from an explosive August in 1983 threatens his marriage. So, Adam returns to remember that month-long family reunion where he was busy wrestling with developing adolescence, a parent's failing health, and watching his cousin Dannie's desperate cries for help. At 14, Adam's fear and anger were constantly threatening to pull him under while the current running through his family flowed, inevitably, toward tragedy.
It was too much to bear back then. But will reliving those painful memories hurt or help Adam as his adult life teeters on the edge of collapse?