Brenda Jackson

Brenda Jackson retired from State Farm Insurance after thirty-seven years in management, having brought out her first book, Tonight and Forever, in 1995 while she was still working there. In 2002 she became the first African American author published in Harlequin's Silhouette Desire line, and she has published more than 150 books and novellas, most of them gathered into linked families: the Madarises, the Steeles, the Westmorelands. An Honorable Seduction (2018) sits in the Westmoreland Legacy strand and sends Navy SEAL David Holloway to draw close to Swan Jamison while carrying out a team assignment. Love in Catalina Cove, from the same year, opened a run set on the Louisiana coast, where Vashti Alcindor returns to the town she left, inherits her aunt's bed and breakfast, and is pulled over for speeding by the new sheriff. Romance Writers of America gave Jackson its Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.