Linda Goodnight

Linda Goodnight is an American author of inspirational romance and contemporary romance fiction. A native of Oklahoma and a former elementary-school teacher, she began publishing with Harlequin in the early 2000s and has since written more than seventy novels, primarily for the Harlequin Love Inspired and Harlequin Heartwarming imprints. She is a winner of the RITA Award, the highest honor given by Romance Writers of America, which she received in 2008 for her Love Inspired novel "In the Spirit of...Christmas." She has also been a Booksellers' Best Award winner, a National Readers' Choice Award winner and a multiple ACFW Carol Award finalist. Several of her novels have been reprinted in collected editions and translated into more than a dozen languages. Goodnight's catalog is anchored by several long-running series and connected-world books. The "Whisper Falls" series, set in a small Ozark town, blends contemporary romance with a touch of the gently inexplicable. The "Buchanons" series follows a sprawling rural Oklahoma family of building contractors. Her "Sundown Valley" books for Love Inspired return repeatedly to ranch settings in the Cherokee Nation, and her "Honey Ridge" women's-fiction trilogy — beginning with "The Memory House" — moves into longer, multi-generational storytelling rooted in a Tennessee bed-and-breakfast. Her work is representative of the inspirational-romance market: small-town settings, faith-grounded characters, family conflict resolved without graphic content, and a strong emphasis on second chances and community restoration. Goodnight has cited her own rural upbringing and her teaching career as the source of the small-town textures — vacation Bible school, county fairs, working ranches, blended families — that recur throughout her books.