UNITED STATES AUTHOR · FICTION · VAMPIRES
L. A. Banks
Also known as: Leslie Ann Peterson Esdaile Banks, Leslie Esdaile
Leslie Ann Peterson was born on 11 December 1959 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. She was a graduate of The University of Pennsylvania Wharton undergraduate program with a Master's in Fine Arts from Temple University. Under different pennames, she wrote over 40 novels, 20 novellas y some non-fiction books in a wide range of genres and. She mysteriously shape-shifts between the genres of romance, women's fiction, crime/suspense thrillers, and paranormal lore. She wrote as Leslie Esdaile, Leslie E. Banks, Leslie Banks, Leslie Esdaile Banks and L. A. Banks. In 2008, she was the recipient of the Essence Magazine Storyteller of the Year Award, as well as the Best 50 Women in Business Award for the State of Pennsylvania. In 2009, she was the recipient of the Romantic Times Booklover's Career Choice Award for Paranormal Fiction, and in 2010 was named Living Legend by the Black Alumni Society of University of Pennsylvania. This full-time writer passed away in 2 August 2011.
What the hell was he doing?
— from Scarface
Most acclaimed
Love Lessons
Another superb novel for older readers from our best-selling authorFourteen-year-old Prue and her sister Grace have been educated at home by their controlling, super-strict father all their lives. They know they are different to 'normal' girls but their attempts to find out what being an ordinary teenager are like - buying nice clothes instead of wearing Mum's odd hand-made garments, reading teenage magazines etc - are greeted with fury by their Dad. But when Dad has a stroke and ends up in hospital, unable to move or speak, Prue suddenly discovers what it's like to have a little freedom. Unable to cope with their education and a sick husband, the girls' mother sends them to the local comprehensive and they experience school life for the first time. Prue had never thought it would be so bitchy and that she'd find it so hard to fit in. The only person she can talk to is her kindly, young, handsome Art teacher, Rax. She and Rax bond over art lessons, and soon he asks to babysit for his young children while he and his wife have a night out on a Friday. This becomes a regular 'date' and Prue can't wait for the ten minutes they have along together as he drives her home. As her feelings for Rax develop, she begins to realise that perhaps he feels the same way about her. But he can't act upon them, can he? An absorbing portrait of a forbidden relationship for teenage readers from the mega bestselling Jacqueline Wilson.
Bite the bullet
Sasha Trudeau considers herself a soldier first and a werewolf second. But while her secret government-sanctioned task-force faces its greatest challenge so far, Sasha faces something much more primal: the undeniable pull of the moon—and her own desires. With rogue wolves savaging both the human and paranormal worlds, Sasha's team of elite operatives has one job: destroy the rogues and isolate the deadly toxin that's poisoned their blood. But the challenge is far more complicated than Sasha could have imagined. Soon she is thrust into a full-scale supernatural war for supremacy—and the only man left who Sasha can turn to might be the biggest danger to her of all. . .and in more ways than one.