Leslie Rule Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Leslie Rule is a bestselling author of paranormal, suspense and crime fiction novels. She is also the writer of dozens of articles that have been published in international publications and magazines such as “Reader’s Digest.” She is famously the daughter of crime author Ann Rule who was best known for her work “The Stranger Beside Me.” In 1971, Ann Rule was working at the suicide crisis hotline in Seattle, where she happened to become friends with a fellow volunteer. That volunteer would later become the notorious serial killer Ted Bundy that killed dozens of women. The seemingly well-mannered young man turned serial killer would become the subject of her pivotal work. Leslie Rule spent more than three decades writing fantasy and suspense novels targeted at young audiences. In 2020, she decided to take over the family business by venturing into true-crime fiction. Leslie Rule is now following in the footsteps of her mother to make a career in true crime fiction with her novel “A Tangled Web.” Published in 2020 by Kensington Publishing, the novel is about Shanna Golyar, a woman charged with the murder of a woman that she had been impersonating via email and phone for years.

Growing up as the daughter of one of the most influential true-crime fiction authors, Leslie Rule was introduced to the genre very early on. As a seventeen-year-old in 1975, she convinced her mother to hire her as her assistant. Ann Rule needed someone to help her take photographs and notes when she was doing her research. Many of the pictures in the Ann Rule novels were the direct product of Leslie’s work and this provided a good grounding on crime fiction for the aspiring author. During this time, she was a rebellious teenager and loved the work though she thought her mother was too worried and paranoid for her safety. During the 1970s, her mother worked for several magazines reporting on true crime. Given that many of the victims in the crimes were girls her age she is still shocked that her mother allowed her the freedom and self-control to do as she wished. Leslie Rule was being exposed to victims who had to endure horrific fates a few blocks from her home even. At that time, she was annoyed by the lectures to stay safe as she believed she was invincible. While she now does not believe her mother was too paranoid, she thinks it was her stubbornness in persisting in the job that gave the experience she needed to become a true fiction author. During this time, she went with her mother who was attending trials in a lot of places including Texas, Oregon, Delaware and California. Even though she never thought she would become a true-crime fiction author she learnt a lot when she accompanied Ann Rule as she interviewed victims, prosecutors and detectives.

Leslie Rule’s “A Tangled Web” is a true-crime fiction story set in November 2012, where Cari Lea Farver has just gone missing from her home in Omaha, Nebraska. She is a thirty-seven-year-old mother, loyal friend, and reliable employee that will never abandon her son, shirk her responsibilities or go on a jaunt when her dying father needed her. Yet she had been sending a lot of texts that seem to indicate that is what she had done. She seems to have relinquished custody of her son, quit her job, and broken up with her boyfriend via text. Her supervisor at work and Dave Kroupa her boyfriend are puzzled by the strange behavior though they had no choice but to accept that she was gone. However, her mother does not everything at face value and went on to file a missing persons’ report. Given that the texts were sent from her phone, the police do not take the missing persons’ report seriously. While her mother Nancy was growing even more fearful, her boyfriend is starting to get paranoid as he believes that Cari is now stalking his steps. He never heard or saw the stalker who seemed aware of all his moves and seemingly obsessed by Shanna Golyar, his casual girlfriend that she frequently abused in the thousands of emails she sent. How did the stalker get his numbers no matter how frequently he changed them? She could get all the names of his friends and knew even what he wore while watching TV. They had made numerous reports of burglaries, vandalism, and death threats but the stalker remained elusive.

Whispers from the Grave by Leslie Rule is a novel set in 2070 where Jenna is visiting her annoying neighbor’s house to check out her attic. Suki her neighbor is oblivious that she can be annoying and Jenna is too polite to tell her to get a life. She thinks Suki is a kleptomaniac but she has no proof though her new lipstick went missing soon after a visit from her neighbor. They are rummaging through the attic when they stumble upon an old box full of relics that are about a century old. Peasant blouses and bell-bottom jeans may look like a treasure trove for a youth from the 1970s, but Suki and Jenna find them ridiculous. They also find an ancient journal that belonged to Rita, a teenage girl that had lived in the house when the relics were fashionable. The bizarre thing is they discover that Jenna is spitting image of Rita when an old photo slips out of the journal in what may be too convenient to be a coincidence. Jenna being the only child in her family is excited by the discovery and thinks Rita may be alive. Maybe she can track down the girl only for her to look her up and learn that she had been killed by her then-boyfriend.

“Kill Me Again” by Leslie Rule is the story of Alexis, a girl that arrives at her mother’s hometown and immediately has an eerie feeling that she had been there before. Her mother finds it perfectly normal, saying that maybe it is because she had visited when she was a toddler. While she is in town, she is unfortunate enough to discover the body of a teen that had seemingly drowned in a pool in the town’s only park. But the more time she spends in the town the more Alexis thinks that maybe the teen did not drown and that her aunt had not left town but something sinister had happened. Things get bizarre when another girl disappears and Alex finds her in the body of the girl that had drowned more than ten years ago. She begins remembering things that she could not have witnessed and now believes that she is the reincarnation of her aunt Nan. She now remembers that she had been killed by a serial killer that was on a rampage in the city and only she can figure out the guilty party or she could become the next target.

2 Responses to “Leslie Rule”

1. TOBY TOBIAS: 1 year ago

   READ ALL ANNS BOOK ALSO. CRIED FOR 2 DAYS WHEN I LEARNED SHE DIED.

   Reply
2. Rose Condon: 2 years ago

   I have everyone of your mothers books and have read some several times. No one can write true crime like she did.

   Reply