Leigh McMullan Abramson Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Leigh McMullan Abramson
Leigh McMullan Abramson has worked as a journalist and a lawyer. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Tablet Magazine, and The New York Times, as well as other places.

She grew up in New York City, and is the daughter of an illustrator and a children’s author. Her parents often collaborated on picture books, many of which were based on Leigh’s own childhood experiences.

Leigh studied ballet at The School of American Ballet into her teens, however she eventually rebelled against her artistic family by attending law school. She practiced law for several years before she followed her passion for writing.

When she first transitioned to writing, she wrote a bunch of nonfiction essays and articles. But she does prefer the freedom that fiction offers.

Leigh never told people she was a writer until she was publishing her freelance pieces. And she did not feel totally comfortable identifying as a writer until she had a book that was coming out. However she doesn’t think this is right necessarily. She thinks if writing is something that you take seriously and does it regularly like it is a job, then you are a writer.

The New York Society Library is a real New York gem, and is Leigh’s favorite place to write. It’s not just a beautiful space but is also a wonderful place to do some research and be surrounded by some other writers. It is impossible not to feel inspired. During college and law school, she always was much more productive in a library and the same is true for her writing. She also met two of her best “writer friends” at the library so it’s definitely a good place to connect with her fellow writers, and make the profession a bit less lonely.

Leigh begins with the sorts of characters that she wants to write about. She has this idea for the story and where she wants it to end up, however she does not map everything out in detail since so many ideas come to her while she is writing. It takes her some time to get to know each of her characters and this helps her inform the sorts of decisions they’ll make and the specific plot turns.

She actually didn’t have the book-within-a-book until she’d written several drafts of her main story. In her early drafts, she would just refer to this wonderful manuscript and the reader was only going to have to take her word for all of it. Then after taking some time away from her manuscript during COVID lockdown, she reread it and felt that it truly needed some actual pieces of the mystery novel in the book.

Leigh had to make sure that these snippets were revealing yet not confusing. She wrote the ten manuscript pieces as their own document in order to make sure they flowed together and implied a full and complete 350 page narrative. Then she attempted to make sure that the mystery manuscript came at regular intervals (about every 30 pages or so) and it was in sync with what was going on in the main narrative. But not giving anything away or overshadowing it.

Leigh believes that getting the setting right plays a major role in building trust with her reader. She is incredibly grateful to a copywriter at her publisher that corrected her mistakes about the route that Ward would take to the psychiatrist in Riverhead, even something that is that minor could possibly throw a reader off.

Leigh, like Isabelle, has this horrific fear of driving. Spending time in Vermont she has overcome them to an extent, however she does not know if she is going to be getting onto the FDR any time soon.

“A Likely Story” was a Belletrist Book Club Pick and CBS New York Book Club with Mary Calvi.

“A Likely Story” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2023. A famous American novelist’s only child learns a shocking family secret which upends everything that she believed she knew about her gilded childhood, her parents, and even her own stalled writing career.

Growing up during the 90s in New York City as the only child of famous parents was both a curse and a blessing for Isabelle manning. Claire (her beautiful society hostess mom) and Ward (New York Times bestselling author dad) were the intellectual It couple of the city. Ward’s glamorous obligations took him away from Isabelle often, however Claire made sure that her childhood was always filled with love.

Isabelle, now an adult, just wants to be a successful writer like her dad, however so many false starts and her mom’s unexpected death, she faces her upcoming 35th birthday all alone and close to a breakdown. Her anxiety just skyrockets when she learns some shocking truths about her parents and starts to wonder if everything that she knew about her family was all just based on an elaborated lie.

This literary page turner is punctuated with fragments of a compulsively readable book-within-a-book about this woman that’s determined to steal the spotlight back from a man that cheated his way to the top. The characters seem to be eerily familiar however is the plot based on fact? And more importantly, who’s the author?

This is a standout debut novel about secrets, family, and the costs that come with protecting a precious legacy. Leigh skillfully captures the idiosyncrasies of the New York artistic elite and then rips the veil away, revealing the characters that are complex, raw, and utterly unforgettable. In Leigh’s psychologically engrossing and rich debut, the lives of New York literati are rendered in such delicious and pitch perfect detail, while this hidden manuscript exposes this web of family secrets, and inspires this audacious deception. It’s a testament to the power of fiction not just to imitate life but to also control it.

This is a sophisticated and dishy story about this aspiring novelist whose own greatest influence (hindrance too) is her own famous dad. This is utterly romantic, moving, and engaging. It’s literary gold.