Why am I passionate about this?

As I child I wanted to know the information that was withheld from me. What were the adults whispering about? What were they hiding? Secrets, things that are hidden, have a way of shaping the lives around them, a dark space that exerts a presence, even though it isn’t seen. I thought if I found out the secret, maybe my family, and the world, would make sense. Breaking Out of Bedlam is my version of my grandmother’s story, based on the whispers I heard and a few faint clues—a newspaper clipping, a Bible, and a baby’s sock. More than that, it’s an explanation for the silence in my family, for my grandmother’s bitterness, her drug abuse, and depression.


I wrote

Breaking Out of Bedlam

By Leslie Larson,

Book cover of Breaking Out of Bedlam

What is my book about?

Cora Sledge is horrified when her children, who doubt her ability to take care of herself, force her into The…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Annabel

Leslie Larson Why did I love this book?

This haunting novel has stuck with me so vividly and in so many ways. Set in 1968, in a tiny village on the Labrador coast, it is the story of a baby born with both male and female genitalia to a hardscrabble couple barely eking out a living. They decide to raise the child as a boy, whom they name Wayne. Wayne’s parents keep the secret, even from him, and as he struggles to adopt the manly attributes expected of him, he can’t suppress his other self, a girl he calls Annabel, who insistently speaks from his innermost self. His journey to discovering who he truly is, and finding a way to express that self in a harsh and narrow environment is both painful and liberating.

By Kathleen Winter,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Annabel as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 1968, into the beautiful, spare environment of remote coastal Labrador in the far north-east of Canada, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor girl, but both at once. Only three people share the secret - the baby's parents, Jacinta and Treadway, and a trusted neighbour, Thomasina. Together the adults make a difficult decision: to go through surgery and raise the child as a boy named Wayne. But as Wayne grows up within the hyper-male hunting culture of his father, his shadow-self - a girl he thinks of as 'Annabel' - is…


Book cover of Caramelo

Leslie Larson Why did I love this book?

Caramelo explores the places where lies end and stories begin, how family histories are built and shaped by each generation that adds its own versions of the “truth” to family lore. Lala, the narrator, is consumed by rumors of the daughter her father had with a washerwoman, a half-sister whom she imagines and seeks, a truth which she struggles to extract from a family known for its storytelling, its “healthy lies,” as her grandmother calls them. “You’re not supposed to ask about such things. There are stories no one is willing to tell you,” Cisneros writes. I love Cisneros’s amazing symphony of details—colors, smells, noises—the way she weaves so many stories together, her hilarious eye for human quirks, and her sparkling prose.

By Sandra Cisneros,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Caramelo as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Every year the three Reyes sons and their families drive south from Chicago via Route 66 to the home of the Awful Grandmother and the Little Grandfather on Destiny Street in Mexico City. From the back seat of her father's red Chevy station-wagon, our storyteller Lala loves to witness the crossover from endless Texas to flamboyant Mexico, the switch from truck stop donuts to street vendors with corn on the cob, the smell of hot tortillas and the sting of roasting chillies in the throat and eyes. The youngest of many cousins, Lala is also the most curious. Did the…


Book cover of You Remind Me of Me

Leslie Larson Why did I love this book?

One of the many things I like about this novel is the way the writing itself mimics the confusion of the protagonist, Jonah—the way Chaon allows us to completely inhabit his mind, down to the most telling details, his doubts, and precise but uncertain perceptions. We too search for the person whom Jonah intuits but doesn’t know, we grasp for the shape whose presence shadows his life. I was dazzled by the patchy way that Chaon builds the narrative, the intriguing overlaps, and surprising connections as he moves between past and present, allowing the secret at the heart of the story to float closer to the surface. I felt deep compassion for the pain and bewilderment of the characters, for the way they struggled forward, for the complexity of their feelings for each other. 

By Dan Chaon,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked You Remind Me of Me as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Jonah Doyle is six years old. He lives with his mother, his grandfather and their dog Elizabeth in a yellow house in South Dakota. It is a house full of tensions, for Jonah's grandfather is old and tired, and his mother often doesn't want to talk at all. And then one sunny day in early spring, when the snow has mostly melted, a terrible accident occurs that will change the course of Jonah's life. That same spring, hundreds of miles away, Troy Timmens is growing up in a very different world. He spends his afternoons at his cousins' house, watching…


Book cover of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Leslie Larson Why did I love this book?

Talk about the elephant in the room. The secret hiding in plain view in this amazing graphic memoir is that both Alison Bechdel and her father Bruce are gay, and their negotiations around what they know about each other and themselves, the things they say and do and the things they don’t, make this a fascinating read that drops deeper and deeper into questions of identity and family relations. Bechdel spent seven years creating the striking panels, which unfold slowly as the story progresses, deepening the text, complicating the relationships, asking compelling questions. Funny and painful, rich with literary allusion, this gigantic achievement takes the graphic narrative to a new level and can be revisited again and again.

By Alison Bechdel,

Why should I read it?

14 authors picked Fun Home as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

DISCOVER the BESTSELLING GRAPHIC MEMOIR behind the Olivier Award nominated musical.

'A sapphic graphic treat' The Times

A moving and darkly humorous family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Alison Bechdel's gothic drawings. If you liked Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis you'll love this.

Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high-school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and the family babysitter. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescence, the denouement is…


Book cover of You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir

Leslie Larson Why did I love this book?

Sherman Alexie gives it everything he’s got in this sprawling, messy, brilliant memoir. Using his mother’s funeral as a jumping-off point, he investigates her chaotic life in an effort to understand the enigma of her personality and the nature of his complicated relationship with her. The contradictions he uncovers, the bits and pieces of information he’s able to glean, and the incongruities in the stories he discovers are stitched together in a narrative he likens to a patchwork quilt: disparate parts brought together that somehow make a whole.

I love the rawness of this memoir, the humor, the mixed genres, and especially the way that Alexie doesn’t spare himself in his examination of how things turned out as they did. He emerges as a not altogether likable player in the vast tragic comedy of his family. In unraveling his relationship with his mother, he uncovers his own demons, the secrets he has kept hidden from himself.

By Sherman Alexie,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked You Don't Have to Say You Love Me as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A searing, deeply moving memoir about family, love, loss, and forgiveness from the critically acclaimed, bestselling National Book Award-winning author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

Family relationships are never simple. But Sherman Alexie's bond with his mother Lillian was more complex than most. She plunged her family into chaos with a drinking habit, but shed her addiction when it was on the brink of costing her everything. She survived a violent past, but created an elaborate facade to hide the truth. She selflessly cared for strangers, but was often incapable of showering her children with the…


Explore my book 😀

Breaking Out of Bedlam

By Leslie Larson,

Book cover of Breaking Out of Bedlam

What is my book about?

Cora Sledge is horrified when her children, who doubt her ability to take care of herself, force her into The Palisades, an assisted living facility. Deciding that truth is the best revenge, Cora writes a tell-all journal that reveals once and for all the secret she has guarded since she was a young woman. She chronicles her childhood in rural Missouri, her shotgun wedding, and the terrible event that changed the course of her life—all intermingled with an account of the day-to-day dramas at The Palisades.

Breaking Out of Bedlam captures the loneliness and secrets that lurk within families, the hardscrabble reality facing women with limited resources, and the resilience of a woman who survives, despite all the odds, through an unlikely combination of passion, humor, and faith.

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Broken Mirror

By Cody Sisco,

Book cover of Broken Mirror

Cody Sisco Author Of Broken Mirror

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

The books on this list have inspired me to expand the horizons of my imagination and to think boldly about the future. So often, it feels like we’re stuck living with our forebears’ bad choices and our leaders’ cynical and self-serving constructions of reality. In defiance, I write books for people who have struggled to fit in, who look around at our world and imagine how things could be better, and who want to read about realistic but optimistic futures. I write alternative history and cyberpunk to highlight how our cultural, technological, and political choices affect our future and how creating change starts with imagining it. 

Cody's book list on thought-provoking sci-fi novels set in vivid worlds

What is my book about?

A fractured mind or a global conspiracy? Uncovering the truth can be hell when nobody believes you… and you can’t even trust yourself. 

"A fantastic science fiction thriller with a sincere and important message.”—Kirkus Reviews. 

“A breathtaking, deeply dark alternate-history Earth with complex characters, layered worldbuilding, and twist after twist after twist.”—Julianna Caro, Reedsy Discovery.

Broken Mirror is the first volume in a queer psychological science fiction saga that looks at the stigma of mental illness and the hellish distrust and alienation that goes with it.

Broken Mirror

By Cody Sisco,

What is this book about?

Broken Mirror: the start of a smart, complex, and imaginative cyberpunk alternate history saga. Literary science fiction from a fresh, young voice.

In a skewed mirror universe, a mentally ill young man searches for his grandfather’s killer.

Someone killed Jefferson Eastmore. His grandson Victor is sure of it, but no one believes him.

Diagnosed with mirror resonance syndrome and shunned by Semiautonomous California society, Victor suffers from hyperempathy, blank outs, and sensory overload. Jefferson devoted his life to researching mental illness and curing Broken Mirrors like Victor through genetic engineering, but now that he’s gone, Victor must walk a narrow…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in destiny, American Indians, and presidential biography?

Destiny 30 books
American Indians 231 books