New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Jana DeLeon was raised in southwest Louisiana among the bayous and gators. Her hometown is Carlyss, but you probably won't find it on a map. Her family owned a camp located on a bayou just off the Gulf of Mexico that you could only get there by boat. The most important feature was the rope hammock hanging in the shade on a huge deck that stretched out over the water where Jana spent many hours reading books. Jana and her brother spent thousands of hours combing the bayous in a flat-bottom aluminum boat, studying the natural habitat of many birds, nutria and alligators. She would like you to know that no animals were injured during these "studies," but they kept makers of peroxide in business. Jana has never stumbled across a mystery or a ghost like her heroines, but she's still hopeful. She now resides in Dallas, Texas, with the most spoiled Sheltie in the world.

Alana Matthews can't remember a time when she didn't want to be a writer. As a child, she was a permanent fixture in her local library, and soon turned her passion for books into writing short stories and finally novels. Alana makes her home in a small town near the coast in California, where she spends her time writing, composing and playing music, and watching her favorite movies.

Born one dark and stormy Halloween night, Lisa Childs was predestined to write suspense novels. She loves spinning dark and twisty stories that keep readers awake because they’re either too busy turning pages or too scared to sleep. Lisa Childs is the prolific author of more than seventy published novels. In addition to romantic suspense, she also writes women’s fiction, paranormal and contemporary romance. Lisa loves to hear from readers who can contact her on Facebook or through her website.

Jenna Ryan was born in Victoria, British Columbia. After long stints in different cities across Canada, she returned home to Vancouver Island where she has lived ever since. She has had thirty-one books published in the Harlequin Intrigue series. Her ideas come from real life, and she is helped in her writing by her sister Kathy. She enjoys reading and is a big fan of women's fiction, psychological suspense and mystery novels. She also enjoys watching classic suspense movies. She loves strong heroines, heroes with character, romance stories and a good whodunit by the fire on a rainy night. Her heritage is a blend of English and Irish—which is probably where the gift of blarney comes from. She is unmarried, but involved with a wonderful man. She also has a little white cat named Sheena. Whenever she is not writing, she travels as much as time and finances will allow. After North America, Europe is her favorite continent to explore, because it was in those countries that many of the myths and legends she drew upon in her early years of writing were born. Growing up, she considered various careers and dabbled in several of them, including, after university, the travel industry, tourism, sales and modeling. Work in the fashion industry in Toronto and Montreal gave her an interesting peek into various aspects of that world. She learned that where money, power and people come together, there will always be unpredictability—an element she feels is essential to a strong mystery. Add a healthy measure of personal conflict, an intriguing setting and a spicy romance into the mix, and you have the ingredients for what she believes to be the best of all possible stories—a great romantic suspense.

In 2004, Colleen Thompson's first romantic thriller, Fatal Error, launched Dorchester Publishing's new line of fast-paced, steamy romantic suspense. The book was nominated for the RITA Award for Best Romantic Suspense and won the Texas Gold for Best Mainstream Fiction. Other honors received by her books include a starred review from Publisher's Weekly, nominations from the Reviewers International Organization, Top Pick, KISS awards, and a reviewers’ choice award nomination from Romantic Times Book Club Magazine, and a Perfect Ten from Romance Reviews Today. Now residing in the Houston area with her husband and son, Colleen works with children in addition to her writing and speaking. When she’s not on deadline, she can often be found hiking with her family, playing with her pets, fiddling with her computer, or with her nose stuck in a good book.

Real name: Jo Ann Vest Pseudonyms: Joanna Wayne. Joanna Wayne began her professional writing career with the release of her first novel, DEEP IN THE BAYOU, in 1994, but Joanna will be the first to tell you that the wheels were set in motion years before. She started reading at four years of age, the same age that she began making weekly trips to the library to check out as many books as they’d let her have, only to finish reading them all before bedtime. That love of books never waned. Joanna was born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana and was the middle child of a large family. She moved to New Orleans, Louisiana in 1984 when she married her current husband. New Orleans opened up a whole new realm of activities and she found the mix of cultures, music, history, food and sultry southern classics along with her love of reading a natural impetus for beginning her writing career. It was there that she attended her first writing class and joined her first professional writing organization. From that point on, there was no looking back. Now, forty published books later, Joanna has made a name for herself as being on the cutting edge of romantic suspense in both series and mainstream novels. She is known for the suspense and emotion she brings to the page, as she takes ordinary people and thrusts them into life-and-death situations. She has been on the Walden Bestselling List for romance and won many industry awards. She is a popular speaker at writing organizations and local community functions and has taught creative writing at the University of New Orleans Metropolitan College. She currently resides in a small community forty miles north of Houston, Texas with her husband. Though she still has many family and emotional ties to Louisiana, she loves living in the Lone Star state.