Sherryl Woods

Sherryl Woods (born 1944) is an American author of romance and mystery fiction, best known for the Sweet Magnolias and Chesapeake Shores series that were adapted for television. She was born in Arlington, Virginia, on 23 July 1944.

Woods graduated in journalism from Ohio State University and covered the television industry for several newspapers before leaving journalism in 1986 to write full time. Her first romances appeared in 1982 under pen names: her debut, Restoring Love, came out as Suzanne Sherrill in Dell's Candlelight Ecstasy line, and her second, Sand Castles, as Alexandra Kirk from Bantam. She began using her own name when she moved to Berkley's Second Chance at Love line, with her first book as Sherryl Woods in 1985. From 1986 she wrote for Silhouette, starting with the Desire title Not at Eight, Darling, and later for Silhouette Special Edition and MIRA. Her official site puts her output at nearly 150 novels. Besides the Sweet Magnolias, Chesapeake Shores, Ocean Breeze and Calamity Janes series, she wrote thirteen mysteries: nine featuring Amanda Roberts and four featuring Molly DeWitt. Childhood summers in Colonial Beach, Virginia, gave her the model for the small-town settings of many of her books.

Chesapeake Shores ran for six seasons on the Hallmark Channel, and Netflix's Sweet Magnolias, on which she is an executive producer, is based on her novels.

For collectors

Much of her early work appeared in numbered category romance lines such as Silhouette Desire and Special Edition. The pseudonymous 1982 debuts for Dell and Bantam are the least familiar part of her bibliography, and the Sweet Magnolias sequence began with Stealing Home (2007).