Sandra Brown,
Author & Vermont Resident

Sandra Brown was born in Waco, Texas, but when she was five, her family relocated to Ft. Worth, where she spent her childhood. Reading was a hobby encouraged by her parents, so at an early age, she developed a love of books and storytelling. English was an easy choice of major when she entered Texas Christian University. She attended there two years before marrying husband, Michael Brown, in 1968. She continued her education at Oklahoma State University and the University of Texas at Arlington.

Early careers included performing in live theatre, managing a cosmetics store, and modeling at the Dallas Apparel Mart. Appearing in television commericals led to other jobs in television--weathercasting and feature reporting on the nationally syndicated "PM Magazine."

Being dismissed from that part-time job was a blessing in disguise because it prompted her to do what she'd always said she would like to do--full time fiction writing.

Taking the advice of a published writer who had appeared on Michael Brown's morning TV talk show, Sandra attended a writers' conference at the University of Houston where she met authors, literary agents, and publishers. She was exposed to a whole new world. Inspired by the ideas exchanged at the conference, she tried her hand at writing for the lucrative romance market.

She and Michael, who owns a video production company, love to travel. "Aside from books and movies, that's probably our favorite pastime." Although her children are now adults pursuing their own careers, the family spends as much time together as schedules permit, often meeting at their vacation house on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, or enjoying their home in Texas, which they share with pet longhorn steers Boudreaux, named after the hero of Slow Heat In Heaven, Bowie, and Bubba, pictured above, her twenty-seventh wedding anniversary gift from Michael.

Although it's an enticing offer, Gillian declines for a very personal reason-she's preoccupied with whether or not the artificial insemination she underwent that day will be successful. Besides, she warns Melina, such a switch could have unexpected consequences.

Media-savvy Chief turns out to be an easy assignment for Melina-in fact the evening with him is as much pleasure as business. But the following morning police arrive at Melina's door with the worst possible news: her beloved twin has been brutally murdered in her own bed. And on the walls, scrawled in blood, are obscenities directed at Gillian, along with insults toward Native Americans that indisputably link Chief to the crime.

Dissatisfied with the official police investigation, Chief and Melina form a grudging alliance, strike out on their own...and find themselves uncovering more questions than answers. Mistrusting even the authorities claiming to protect them, on the run with their lives in danger, the two are soon following a crooked and bloody trail that inexplicably leads to Gillian's attempt to conceive a child...and to the threshold of an inner sanctum, where a megalomaniac hatches horrific schemes and lies in wait for Gillian's replacement, her identical twin-Melina.

TV reporter Tiel McCoy is driving down Interstate 20 on her way to New Mexico for a well-earned vacation. But her itinerary is rewritten when she hears on the radio that the teenage daughter of well-known Fort Worth multimillionaire Russell Dendy has been kidnapped. At least that's the official report. In truth Sabra Dendy is pregnant and has run away with her boyfriend, Ronnie Davison. After calling her editor, Tiel abandons her holiday plans in favor of pursuing the story.

Then, in a town called Rojo Flats, during an innocuous visit to a convenience store, Tiel will come up close and personal with the barrel of a gun, the desperate young lovers--and the scoop of a lifetime.

In the electrifying standoff that follows, she will meet and grow to trust a strangely familiar local rancher whom fate has also sent to the scene of the crime. She will learn why the two young runaways fear the wealthy father of one of them even more than the FBI...and why, casting off a reporter's impartiality, she must defend them against a world bent on their destruction.

--Steffi Mundell, colleague, ex-lover, and rival for the DA's office --Rory Smilow, the homicide detective without equal and Hammond's avowed enemy --the wily and beautiful Davee Pettijohn, Lute's widow and Hammond's lifelong friend who's too honest to mourn the husband she despised --and Hammond's prime suspect, the mysterious woman who shares the secret that would be fatal to Hammond's ambitions.

For the first time in his career, he's bending the rules in favor of the suspect. All clues point to her guilt. Yet she holds in reserve the perfect alibi-Hammond Cross. Is she a master manipulator who set him up? Or an innocent victim?

As her past is revealed with startling repercussions, links between Hammond's own father and the dead man also surface, forcing him to weigh family loyalty against his desire for full disclosure, no matter how shattering the truth might be.

His reputation as a tough prosecutor is placed on the line, and he's torn between protecting the woman he's come to love against false prosecution--and a killer bent on eliminating all possible witnesses.