Nora Roberts

Nora Roberts (born Eleanor Marie Robertson on 10 October 1950 in Silver Spring, Maryland) is an American author of romance and romantic suspense, who also writes the In Death series as J. D. Robb.

Her first novel, Irish Thoroughbred, was published by Silhouette Books in January 1981 as number 81 in the Silhouette Romance line, and had gone through five printings by 1984. She went on to write more than 225 novels. In 1995 she began writing futuristic police procedurals as J. D. Robb, starting with Naked in Death in July 1995. The In Death books follow New York lieutenant Eve Dallas and now number over 60 novels. Her Born In trilogy was issued in Britain under the name Sarah Hardesty.

She was the first author inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame, received the RWA Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997 and had won 21 RITA Awards by 2012. Her books had 400 million copies in print by 2009. Her husband, Bruce Wilder, owns Turn the Page Books in Boonsboro, Maryland.

For collectors

Her earliest Silhouette paperbacks, beginning with Irish Thoroughbred (Silhouette Romance 81, 1981), are the starting point for collectors, along with the paperback first of Naked in Death (July 1995), which opened the J. D. Robb series.