Since moving to Austin to ease the pain of past, tragic mistakes, she has led a life of virtual solitude, coming alive only when she hosts her show. To her loyal listeners, she is a wise and trusted friend who not only takes their music requests but listens to their problems and occasionally dispenses advice.
Paris's world of isolation is brutally threatened, however, when one listener -- a man who identifies himself only as "Valentino" -- tells her that her on-air advice to the girl he loves has caused her to leave him and that now he intends to exact his revenge. First he plans to kill the girl, whom he has abducted -- which he says he will do in 72 hours -- then he will come after Paris.
Joined by the Austin police department, Paris plunges into a race against time in an effort to find Valentino before he can carry out his threat to kill -- and to kill again. To her dismay, she finds that one of the people she must work with is crime psychologist Dean Malloy, a man with whom she shares a history that had a catastrophic effect on both their lives. His presence arouses old passions, forcing Paris to confront painful memories that she had come to Austin to forget.
As the clock ticks down, and Valentino's threats come closer and closer to becoming a reality, Paris suddenly finds herself forced to deal with a killer who may not be a stranger at all.
Sandra Lynn Cox was born on March 12, 1948 in Waco, Texas and raised in Ft. Worth. She is nothing if not serious when it comes to her work. As the oldest of five daughters, she was a responsible and mature girl, and always chose to read a book rather than play with dolls. Her responsible nature stayed with Sandra as she graduated from Texas Christian University with a degree in English, and in her job as a contributing feature reporter at the nationally syndicated PM Magazine in Dallas. When the show experienced mass layoffs, however, Sandra found herself out of work.
Sandra married Michael Brown, former television anchorman and award-winning documentarian of Dust to Dust, and returned to Ft. Worth. They had two children, Rachel and Ryan. Though she continued in her occasional position as a showroom model in Dallas, her husband encouraged her to try fiction writing while their children were at school. He had just left a career as a news anchor and talk-show host to form his own production company, so why shouldn't she take a creative risk, too?
Within a year Sandra sold her first novel, Love's Encore, under the name Rachel Ryan (taken from the first names of her two children). Soon thereafter, she was producing a succession of books for six different publishers, culling ideas from briefs in USA Today, television shows, and her own active imagination. She wrote two boosk as Laura Jordan and several books for Harlequin under the name Erin St. Claire.
Since the publication of her first novel in 1981, she has penned well over sixty books. Sandra has over fifty million copies of her books in print, and has achieved some major feats on what is perhaps the most highly regarded bestseller list of all--that of the New York Times. Since 1990, every one of Sandra's novels has appeared on the list. In total, her books have appeared on the prestigious list over thirty times.
In 1992 her novel "French Silk" was made into an ABC-TV movie.
