Roxanne Vaughn

Roxanne grew up with a wrench in her hand — her father ran a two-bay garage off a dead highway, and she learned to rebuild a carburetor before she learned to drive. She rode before she wrote, and it shows: the bikes are real, the grease is real, the economics of a broke town where the biggest employer left in 1994 are real. She came up on Zane and Kristen Ashley in equal measure and writes the books she wanted on the shelf — outlaw men who are hard everywhere except one place, and women who are nobody's victim and nobody's prize, who walk into that world with their eyes open and get to choose it out loud. Her one unbreakable rule: the possessiveness is a promise, never a cage. "Mine" is something both of them get to say. The danger always points outward — at the men who'd hurt her — never at the heroine.