LESLIE BRADFORD-SCOTT
The Liar’s Playbook
A memoir of family & crime
Simon & Schuster • May 5, 2026
Some family secrets should stay buried.
This isn’t one of them.
At twelve years old, Leslie Bradford-Scott watched police cars swarm her family’s suburban home in Ontario. Hours later, she, her mother, and her grandmother were fleeing across the border into Florida with no explanation and no questions allowed. In an instant, her quiet childhood collapsed into a world of grift, danger, and loss.
Decades later, her mother handed her a blue binder. Inside was her father’s secret prison manuscript, which they dubbed The Liar’s Playbook, and a confession to trafficking goods, running arms, and working in the gray zone between intelligence and organized crime. He claimed he’d been dragged into crime by corrupt cops.
For most of her life, Leslie believed her father was a small-time drug dealer with delusions of grandeur. Instead, she uncovered a shadow world of espionage and explosive family secrets, including his claim that he smuggled jewels to fund CIA-backed operations for the Contras.
Part true-crime thriller and part intimate memoir, The Liar’s Playbook follows one woman’s search for the truth through unreliable memories, corrupt intelligence agents, and the long echo of a father’s double life. As Leslie pieces together what really happened, she’s left with one haunting question: Can you forgive someone whose choices nearly destroyed you?
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The Liar’s Playbook is two stories woven together:
A daughter’s investigation into her father’s impossible claims
A search for truth inside a maze of whispered family legends, government secrets, and meticulously crafted lies.
A raw account of rebuilding a life from nothing
Escaping an destructive marriage.
Writing award-winning screenplays on Post-its while selling cars.
Building a multimillion-dollar business from a laundry room.
Reinvention as survival.
The result?
A memoir about the lies that destroy us, the lies that save us, and the complicated truth that all families are built on both.
Perfect for readers who loved:
Educated - Tara Westover
The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls
Wild - Cheryl Strayed
Awards & Recognition
Screenwriting
Winner - Best Romantic Comedy Script
Moondance International Film Festival
(Written on Post-it notes during dealership shifts, proving creativity doesn’t wait for perfect conditions.)
Winner - Children’s Animated Comedy
Los Angeles Family Film Festival
(Written in a cabin on the French River during nine months of self-imposed exile from corporate life.)
Coming Next
Leslie is currently working on a new novel — a work of fiction exploring identity, privilege, and family secrets. Of course she is.
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From the Author
"I never intended to dig up the ghost of my dad. I was perfectly content building my business and pretending my childhood was just ‘quirky.’ Then my mother handed me my father’s manuscript, and I realized some stories demand to be told — not because they’re comfortable, but because they’re true. Or at least, as true as anything can be when your father might have been a CIA operative and definitely was a consummate liar.
The Liar’s Playbook is my attempt to untangle the truth from the fiction, to understand how family myths shape us, and to finally answer the question: Who was Jean Claude Garofoli, really? But even more important, who am I?"