Sandra Brown

Texas native Sandra Brown was an astonishingly prolific and successful genre novelist, placing more than 60 romance and thriller books on the New York Times bestseller list over the course of her career. Born in Waco, Texas, Brown and her four younger sisters were raised in Fort Worth. She developed an interest in literature at an early age, and earned her degree in English at Texas Christian University. For a time, Brown worked as a model at the Dallas Apparel Mart before segueing into television news, first as a weather reporter for KLTV and then as a contributing reporter to WFAA's edition of the syndicated "PM Magazine" (1978-1991). However, her on-screen career ended when the program experienced layoffs, and after marrying TV anchorman and documentarian Michael Brown, she returned to Fort Worth to raise two children. For a while, she worked as a showroom model, but took to writing after her husband challenged her to pen a novel. In 1981, Brown published her first romance novel, Love's Encore, under the pen name Rachel Ryan, which she took from the first names of her children. The success of the book led to a slew of romances and occasional suspense novels for six different publishers, including Harlequin, Dell and Bantam Doubleday. Brown used her own name for many of these books, including the Coleman Family and Mason Sisters series, while she employed the pseudonyms Erin St. Claire and Laura Jordan for many of her Harlequin and Dell romances, respectively. In 1988, she moved out of the serialized works and devoted her attention to single title romance and suspense thrillers. The decision proved wise: her 1990 novel Mirror Image became her first book to reach the New York Times best-seller list, and within just two years' time, she had three novels on the list at the same time, a feat shared by Stephen King, J.K. Rowling and Tom Clancy. Three of Brown's novels were adapted into TV movies, including "French Silk" (ABC, 1994) and "Richochet" (TNT, 2011), while Brown herself stepped in front of the camera to appear on a 2008 episode of the TruTV profile series "Murder By the Book" (2006-08). The following year, Brown stepped away from her genre efforts to write Rainwater, a historical drama set during the Great Depression. In 2014, her novel Mean Streak became her 63rd work to reach the New York Times bestseller list.