In Leslie Baird‘s debut thriller Salomé, an American journalist named Courtney follows a magnetic French woman to a remote town in France, where fascination quickly curdles into paranoia. As Courtney becomes entangled with Salomé’s unsettling family, a mysterious wellness empire, and whispers of a cult obsessed with immortality, she must decide whether she’s uncovering the story that could define her career or walking willingly into something deadly.
Baird currently lives in Europe and received an MFA in fiction from Sewanee, the University of the South.
We asked her to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers could get to know the books that shaped her life and influenced her writing.
What was the first book you were obsessed with as a child?
The Goosebumps series. I used to read one a day. There were only two that scared me so much I had to put them down. (Piano Lessons Can Be Murder, 1993, and A Night in Terror Tower, 1995.)
What book helped you through puberty?
In the sixth and seventh grades, I was a total horse girl. I read everything I could find by Marguerite Henry––Misty of Chincoteague, and all the horse books in my middle school library. I remember checking out Black Beauty and looking at the stamped card inside the front cover, only to realize that I had also been the last person to check it out some months before. I pretty much went straight from horse books to reading all of the Chuck Palaniuk books at age sixteen and feeling very edgy for doing so. I wouldn’t say they “got me through” puberty the way Judy Blume might have!
What book do you wish 16-year-old you had read?
All About Love by bell hooks, though I don’t know if I had enough life experience for it to land yet.
If you were to teach a class on Damn Good Writing, what books would make the syllabus?
Sula by Toni Morrison. I read Sula for the first time in 2015, and I remember thinking, “Oh, so this is a novel.” The complicated characters, the pristine prose, the way it spans so much time, yet never feels rushed. The bar was forever raised.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Each time I read this, I like to imagine how an overzealous editor could’ve ruined it. It’s long, but it earns its length. It’s a masterclass of first-person POV where the reader and narrator discover the truth alongside each other.
The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff. I finished this at two a.m. on my birthday, sitting alone on the balcony of a friend-of-a-friend’s apartment in Montreal, ugly crying. Lauren Groff can tell a story in the most beautiful way imaginable. The next day, I saw this graffiti just around the corner. The whole event felt like a spiritual experience.
Jack Rabbit by Shannon Lee Miller. It won’t be out until 2027, but I had the pleasure of reading two early drafts. This book knows exactly what it wants to be, and nobody executes on that like Shannon Lee Miller! She has an amazing ability to balance humor and heart, which isn’t easy!
What books helped guide you while writing your book?
The hardest editorial step for me was line editing, probably because it was so final. I had recently moved to Lisbon, and I stepped inside Fable, an English-language bookstore, and the first book on the shelf was an annotated edition of Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto, where she wrote marginalia and her own line edits into the manuscript, over two decades after its publication. It felt serendipitous because Ann Patchett owns a bookstore in Nashville, where I had just moved from. Her notes seriously helped me. Especially the places where she picked on her old writing style, because it reminded me that saying, “It’s done” for one book does not mean I’m done growing as a writer.
What books are on your nightstand now?
Martyr! And two printed out manuscripts my friends have sent me to beta read. I try to read widely, but between my peers and editorial clients, much of what I read is still in manuscript form.