Lesley M.M Blume
By: K. D.
Books Written By Lesley
• Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of The
Somerset Sisters.
• The Rising Star of Rusty Nail
• Tennyson
Lesley M.M Blume
• Lesley Is a author journalist, columnist, cultural observer,
and bon vivant, based in New York City where she was
born.
• Most of her heroes sadly are dead or fictional. Her
heroes are: Diana Vreeland, Marlene Dietrich, Isak
Dinesen, Katharine Graham, Zero Mostel, Royal
Tenenbaum, the Marchesa Casati, Oscar Wilde, Peggy
Guggenheim, Elsa Schiaparelli, Anthony Blanche, Flora
Post, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lee Miller, Edith Wharton, and
Collette.
Her Life
She lives in Greenwich Village with her husband and their
French bulldog, who was a featured character in her
bestselling book, Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades
of the Somerset Sisters.
Lesley was recently hand-picked by Vogue as a founding
member of the Vogue 100, an organization of
“influential decision makers and opinion leaders known
for their distinctive taste in fashion and culture, [and
who] personify the rising influence of women over the
past several decades.”
Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of
the Somerset Sisters
• Eleven-year-old Cornelia is the daughter of two worldfamous pianists—a legacy that should feel fabulous, but
instead feels just plain lonely. She surrounds herself with
dictionaries and other books to isolate herself from the
outside world. But when a glamorous neighbor named
Virginia Somerset moves next door with her servant
Patel and a mischievous French bulldog named Mister
Kinyatta, Cornelia discovers that the world is a much
more exciting place than she had originally thought.
Book Covers that Lesley has wrote.
Tennyson
When Emery goes off in search of his wife, he leaves the girls with
their Aunt Henrietta, at his childhood home, Aigredoux. Aigredoux
is the ancestral Fontaine family home in Louisiana, that Emery and
Sadie left far behind when they married. In ruins since the end of
the Civil War, the family has lost all their money and their place in
high society. Aigredoux itself has been overrun by vines, moss, and
the weight of its own past. While there, Tennyson is haunted by
dreams of her family’s past and the “blood money” that built
Aigredoux, on the backs of slaves. The dreams horrify her and at
the same time inspire her to write the tale of her family’s demise.
She knows that if she can get the story published in the one
magazine her mother always reads, Sadie will see it and come back
home.
Lesley Extra Biography
• Lesley M. M. Blume is a writer and journalist
based in New York City. Her first book for young
readers, Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of
the Somerset Sisters, was published by Knopf last
July and was called "a fabulous read that will
enchant its audience with the magic to be found
in everyday life" in a starred review by School
Library Journal.
Extra!!
• Born in New York City.[1] Blume attended Williams College and
Oxford University. She was granted a Herchel Smith Fellowship
for graduate work at Emmanuel College. As a journalist, she began
her career at the Jordan Times in Amman and Cronkite
Productions in New York City; soon afterwards she became an
off-air reporter for ABC News' Nightline with Ted Koppel. Her
work has appeared in many publications, from Slate to Vogue.
• Blume's first book, Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the
Somerset Sisters, was released by Knopf in July 2006.
The Rising Star of Rusty Nail
• Franny Hansen is a 10-year-old piano prodigy living in
Rusty Nail, Minnesota. Once the Coot Capitol of the
world, in 1953 it's just a run-of-the-mill town with one
traffic light and a bizarre cast of characters. She's long
exhausted the talents of the town's only piano teacher
and seems destined to perform at church events and
school assemblies, until a mysterious Russian woman
arrives in Rusty Nail. Franny's neighbors are convinced
the "Commie" is a threat to their American way of life,
but Franny's not so sure.
Extra!!
• A novel about the daughter of a world-famous concert pianist
growing up in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, Cornelia was a
loosely autobiographical work. Blume's own mother was a concert
pianist, and Blume created character sketches based on the
colorful people in her mother's coterie.[1] Cornelia was chosen as
one of the "Best Children's Books of 2007" and a book of
Outstanding Merit by the prestigious Bank Street College of
Education, and selected as one of the “Best of the Best Books of
2006” by the Chicago Public Library. It is a Scholastic bookfair
bestseller. Her critically-acclaimed second book, The Rising Star of
Rusty Nail, was released by Knopf in June 2007. According to
Blume's website, the story fictionalizes her own mother's
experience as a small-town piano prodigy on the road to fame. In
a starred review, Booklist said that "Blume offers a story that is as
rich as it is delicious."
Extra!!
• Her third book, titled Tennyson, was released in
January 2008, and is about a "ruined, elite
Depression-era family in Louisiana's plantation
country." Critics lauded Blume's "brilliant, poetic
writing" and placed her in the same category as
Southern writers Eudora Welty, Truman Capote,
and Flannery O'Connor Tennyson was the subject
of an unprecedented 15-minute interview with
Good Morning America's Robin Roberts, who was
raised in the Gulf Coast region depicted in the
book.
Characters in all the books by Lesley M.M
Blume
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•
•
•
•
•
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Mister Kinyatta
Cornelia
Virginia
The Maid and Butler
Franny
Emery
Aunt Henriatta
Best Selling Book
Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of
the Somerset Sisters
Sources
• Amazon.com
• Google.com
• Bing.com