Susannah Sandlin Books in Order

Susannah Sandlin is the pen name Suzanne Johnson uses for romantic suspense and paranormal romance. Her stories tend to head south, into small Alabama towns, Louisiana wetlands, old secrets, and communities where the supernatural has a very practical effect on daily life.

She was born in Winfield, Alabama, and grew up in rural Alabama. Later, she lived and worked in New Orleans for many years, an experience that stayed close to her fiction. The city, its history, and the disruption caused by Hurricane Katrina helped push her from journalism and long-form nonfiction toward writing novels.

She had been a writer all along. She just changed lanes.

Before publishing fiction, Johnson built a career in educational publishing and magazine work at universities in several states. She became a veteran journalist and editor, earning more than fifty national awards for nonfiction writing and editing. She has also worked as an associate editor for Auburn Magazine, the quarterly publication connected with Auburn University.

Her fiction career began under her own name with the New Orleans-set urban fantasy novel Royal Street. That book introduced Drusilla Jaco, known as DJ, a young wizard dealing with a post-Katrina city where the line between ordinary life and the paranormal world has broken down. The Sentinels of New Orleans books let Johnson use the place she knew well, along with its music, food, history, humor, and ghosts.

Under the Susannah Sandlin name, she takes a darker and more romantic route. Redemption launched the Penton Legacy, a paranormal series about vampires and humans trying to build a safe life together after a medical crisis makes human blood dangerous to vampires. The books mix romance between a different central couple with a longer fight against the powerful Vampire Tribunal.

Then came a change of pace. Lovely, Dark, and Deep and Deadly, Calm, and Cold form The Collectors, a pair of treasure-hunt thrillers in which wealthy players force ordinary people into dangerous searches for lost historical objects. The later Wilds of the Bayou books, beginning with Wild Man's Curse, bring the action back to Louisiana, following wildlife officers through murder cases, family trouble, and the hard-to-reach country of the bayou.

Place matters in these books.

Sandlin's characters are often people with difficult pasts who have to choose whether to run, trust someone, or stand their ground. There are vampires, psychics, shapeshifters, old curses, smugglers, and killers, but the emotional center is usually a partnership under pressure. Romance is part of the story, not a break from the danger.

Johnson has described herself as a planner, which fits the moving parts in her novels. Her work as Susannah Sandlin combines that organized, suspense-minded approach with a fondness for the Deep South, damaged heroes and heroines, close-knit teams, and problems that do not stay buried for long.