Sandra Brown

Sandra Brown (born 1948) is an American author of romance and romantic suspense who began publishing in 1981 under several pen names and has since had more than 50 New York Times bestsellers.

She was born Sandra Lynn Cox on 12 March 1948 in Waco, Texas, and grew up in Fort Worth. She studied English at Texas Christian University, then worked in television as a weather presenter for KLTV in Tyler and as a feature reporter for the Dallas edition of PM Magazine. Her early category romances appeared as Rachel Ryan (Love's Encore, 1981), Laura Jordan (Hidden Fires, 1982) and Erin St. Claire (Not Even for Love, 1982), as well as under her own name. Texas! Lucky (1990) began her Tyler family saga, and she moved increasingly into suspense with French Silk (1992), filmed for television in 1994, White Hot (2004) and Play Dirty (2007).

Her honours include the Romance Writers of America Lifetime Achievement Award, the Texas Medal of Arts for literature and the International Thriller Writers' Thriller Master award in 2008.

For collectors. Her earliest books were category romances for lines such as Dell's Candlelight Ecstasy, Harlequin and Silhouette, and Loveswept, several of them issued as Rachel Ryan, Laura Jordan or Erin St. Claire, so the first printings of those 1981 and 1982 titles carry the pen names rather than her own. French Silk (1992), a 1993 RITA finalist and a 1994 television film, is the best-known title of her move into suspense.