Southern Knights

This series started as a trilogy as well as one of those rare gifts we writers dream of. One night I was watching television, and a line popped into my head. Michael Bennett knew he was in trouble when the visions started again. I grabbed paper and pen, scribbled it down and kept scribbling. Within a few hours, I had three books lined out, six characters fleshed out.

The stories are set in and around my favorite city of New Orleans, with a few scenes taking place in a tiny neighborhood anchored by Serenity Street. I fell in love with Serenity and soon wrote three more books set entirely in the neighborhood.

All six books were published by Silhouette Intimate Moments. And a bonus: in my later SIM, MURPHY’S LAW, Remy puts in an appearance.

MICHAEL’S GIFT, 1994

Michael’s a New Orleans cop who has visions, and lately those visions feature a beautiful blonde in trouble. Since his last psychic experience led to his partner’s death, he would ignore this one if he could. But the blonde, Valerie Navarre, is his friend Remy’s cousin, and someone wants her dead. When fate leads her to his door, he has no choice but to protect her with his life.

REGARDING REMY, 1994

FBI agent Remy Sinclair returns to his family home outside New Orleans to recuperate from a gunshot wound. Going along to take care of him is Susannah Duncan, a woman with more secrets than he can begin to guess at – not the least of which is she’s there not to help him, but to help the man who tried to kill him finish the job.

A MAN LIKE SMITH, 1995

Jolie Wade isn’t looking for a serious relationship. Been there, done that, has a few secrets to keep because of it. Even if she were looking, she wouldn’t be looking at a man like Assistant US Attorney Smith Kendricks. He’s from back East, blue-blood, old money, and she was born and raised on New Orleans’s Serenity Street, one of the poorest places in the city. But Smith doesn’t care about background or money or even her secret. He just wants her.

CONVINCING JAMEY, 1997

Jamey O’Shea has lived all his life on Serenity Street. He runs the local bar, helps out where he can and does his best to protect the residents of the few square poverty-stricken blocks from the gang that wants to rule the place – a gang that includes his son, Reid. When Karen Montez moves in across the street to create a women’s shelter, he looks out for her, too, never expecting that Karen can bring healing to the street, to his son and to him..

THE TAMING OF REID DONOVAN, 1997

Reid’s had a tough life: a father who was never there, a mother who dragged him hundreds of miles from home only to abandon him with a grandmother who didn’t care if she ever saw him again . . . and that home is just down the street from O’Shea’s, owned and operated by the father who also couldn’t care less. Then the women’s shelter opens a school for neighborhood kids, and Cassie Wade comes to teach. Cassie was born on Serenity, but her family moved away when she was tiny. She’s beautiful, intelligent, sweet, and she doesn’t care about any of Reid’s countless mistakes. But will she stand by him when the feds force him back into the life he’s trying to escape?

KNIGHT ERRANT, 1998

Nicky Carlucci and Jamey O’Shea were best buds growing up on Serenity, but Nicholas got out, went to college, fell in love, then lost his fiancée in a senseless killing. His quest for revenge led him to work for organized crime and straight into a prison cell. Now he’s out again, beaten down and returned to Serenity, where he works part-time at O’Shea’s and lives upstairs. Across the hall is Lainie Ravenel, an employee at the women’s shelter, the first woman who’s attracted him down deep since his fiancee’s death. But Lainie’s not as down on her luck as she appears. She’s an FBI agent working undercover to protect Nicholas from the men he used to work for. Nicholas doesn’t want protection . . . but he does want Lainie, at least until he finds out who she really is.