Tallman, Shirley

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TALLMAN, Shirley

(Erin Ross)

PERSONAL: Born in Los Angeles, CA; married. Education: Earned a B.A.

ADDRESSES: Home—P.O. Box 6331, Incline Village, NV 89450.

CAREER: Novelist and screenwriter. KNTV, San Jose, CA, traffic manager, script writer and director.

AWARDS, HONORS: Romantic Times nominations for Best Desire Novel of the Year.

WRITINGS:

(With Nancy Hersage) Please Stand By—Your Mother's Missing, Libra Publishers, 1980.

(With Nancy Hersage) The Babysitter's Seduction (television movie), National Broadcasting Corporation, 1996.

Also co-author, with Nancy Hersage, of novels The War Magician and Lili.

"sarah woolson murder mysteries" series:

Murder on Nob Hill, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 2004.

The Russian Hill Affair, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 2005.

romance novels; under pseudonym erin ross:

Second Harvest, Silhouette (Buffalo, NY), 1982.

Flower of the Orient, Silhouette (Buffalo, NY), 1983.

Time for Tomorrow, Silhouette (Buffalo, NY), 1983.

Fragrant Harbor, Silhouette (Buffalo, NY), 1984.

Tide's End, Silhouette (Buffalo, NY), 1984.

Odds Against, Silhouette (Buffalo, NY), 1984.

Child of My Heart, Silhouette (Buffalo, NY), 1984.

Roses for Remembering, Silhouette (Buffalo, NY), 1985.

Willing Spirit, Silhouette (Buffalo, NY), 1986.

Carnival Madness, Silhouette (Buffalo, NY), 1987.

ADAPTATIONS: The War Magician was optioned by Paramount; Lili was filmed by the Canadian Broadcast Corporation.

SIDELIGHTS: Writer Shirley Tallman began her career as a syndicated columnist and as a writer for radio and television in San Jose, California. Since then, she has been a romance novelist, a screenwriter, and—most recently—a mystery novelist. Her romances, most written under the pseudonym Erin Ross, achieved bestseller status and won nominations for the Romantic Times Best Desire Novel of the Year. In addition, her screenplay The Babysitter's Seduction, co-written with Nancy Hersage and starring Keri Russell and Phylicia Rashad, was produced for National Broadcasting Corporation as a television film in 1996.

Tallman's first mystery novel, Murder on Nob Hill, appeared in 2004. It tells the story of a nineteenth-century female lawyer in San Francisco, and the way she deals with a series of killings in which the victims are gruesomely mutilated. Sarah Woolson's first client in her new job at the prestigious law firm of Shepherd, Shepherd, McNaughton, and Hall is a wealthy widow accused of stabbing her abusive husband fatally in the genitalia. Although the widow turns out to have an actor lover, Woolson is convinced that her client is innocent—in part because she knows the shady way in which her late husband made his fortune and because several of his former partners in a swindle he perpetrated at the Comstock Load are killed in the same grisly manner. In the process of exonerating her client, Woolson has to contend with her colleagues' sexist attitudes as well as locating and defeating the murderer. GraceAnne A. DeCandido, writing for Booklist, called the novel a "promising if melodramatic debut," and a Kirkus Reviews contributor concluded that the "lively details of a lively time and place spice up a typically feisty heroine's struggles against sexism."