Patricia Matthews

Author Information
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  • Bibliography:
    35 Books (2 Series)
  • First Book:
    January 1977
  • Latest Book:
    November 2003
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About the Author

Patricia Anne Klein Ernst was born on July 1, 1927 in San Fernando, California, USA, the daughter of Gladys Gable and Roy Oliver Ernst. Her mother enrolled her in the famous Meglin Kiddies school, but she recorded only two of her songs professionally for one demo tape. She studied at California State University, Los Angeles, were she worked as secretary to the General Manager of Associated Students by the California State College. In 21 December 1946, she married Marvin Owen Brisco and moved to Arizona, they had two sons: Michael Arvie and David Roy. By 1961, the marriage had ended in divorce. Focused on her writing career, she returned to California, where she met the writer Clayton Matthews in a local writers' group. After Clayton divorced his first wife, he and Patricia married in 3 November 1972 and lived near San Diego.

She started to write poetry, juvenile books, a play, fantasy and mystery short stories, which she signed under different names: Patricia Ernst, P.A. Brisco and Pat A. Brisco. Using the names Patty Brisco and Pat Brisco, she wrote gothic novels. When the market for gothic novels softened, at the suggestion of her husbland agent, Jay Garon, she began to write romance novels under her second married name, Patricia Matthews. In the 1970's, she become a popular writer, called "American's First Lady of Historical Romance". She and her husband also collaborated on several romance and suspense novels using the pseudonyms Laura Wylie and Laurie Wylie. She and her husband wrote five Casey Farrell mystery novels together, and she wrote three on her own, the Thumbprint Mysteries, set in the American Southwest, at the fourth-sixth- and eighth-grade reading levels, yet offer characters, situations, and concerns appropriate for adult readers. With Denise Hrivnak, she also wrote under the pseudonym Denise Matthews. Her husband Clayton died on March 25, 2004. Patricia died on December 7, 2006 in the Brisco family home in Prescott, Arizona.

Full Series List in Order

Casey Farel

1 - The Scent of Fear (Sep-1992)
2 - Vision of Death (Feb-1993)
3 - Taste of Evil (Dec-1993)
4 - Sound of Murder (Jun-1994)
5 - Touch of Terror (Oct-1995)

Hannah's Story

1 - Love's Avenging Heart (1977)
2 - Dancer of Dreams (Aug-1984)

Book List in Order: 35 titles

  • Love's Avenging Heart

    • / Historical Romance
    • Buy Buy
    Hannah's Story - 1

    The searing tempestuous romance of a young woman caught in a new and flaming web of turbulent passion! Love's dream... Hannah wondered if her daydreams and nightly fantasies would ever come true. A captive, near-slave to Silas Quint, h...

  • Love's Wildest Promise

    • / Historical Romance
    • Buy Buy

    LOVE'S WILDEST PROMISE It seemed so distant and unreachable to the innocent, young Sarah Moody, lady's maid in a wealthy London home. Then suddenly the world turns upside down. Sarah is abducted and smuggled aboard a ship sailing for the Colonies...

  • Love, Forever More

    Young Serena Foster daydreamed of love and wondered when it would happen to her. Suddenly tragedy struck and her parents were killed leaving her totally alone... with young Rory Clendenning. He, too, was alone and searching for something. Their one n...

  • Love's Daring Dream

    • / Historical Romance
    • Buy Buy

    Fleeing from a starving Ireland ravaged by the great potato famine of 1852, the beautiful and indomitable Maggie Donnevan took her three brothers and started a new life in the American Northwest. Fighting to keep her family alive, Maggie had little t...

  • Love's Pagan Heart

    • / Historical Romance
    • Buy Buy

    Liliha She was a beautiful young princess, born of mixed parentage, half-Hawaiian, half-English. Her lithe and sultry figure was in wild contrast to her placid, childlike face...a combination that reflected the best of two races and captivated all...

  • Love's Magic Moment

    EVIL & ECSTASY Meredith Longley was a favorite child, sheltered and portected by an elderly father. She had been lovingly spared the harsh realities of life and was ill prepared to carry on her father's work when he died. Now, committed to an archae...

  • Love's Golden Destiny

    It was a lust for gold that brought them together...only to be trapped by the wildest of passions! IT WAS WILD AND SWEET...and tinged with the thrill of the forbidden. Josh pulled his mouth away and put his cheek next to hers. His lips, near he...

  • Love's Many Faces

    The language of love is poetry; words that touch the heart and soul, words that remember beautiful yesterdays and promise wonderous tomorrows... words that capture the magic of a special moment, a special feeling. Patricia Matthews is a woman who und...

  • Raging Rapids

    Temporarily staying with a grandfather he has never met before, Mike decides to run away in a boat that must pass through some "raging rapids."...



  • Love's Raging Tide

    • / Historical Romance
    • Buy Buy

    She was young, beautiful, and suddenly all too vulnerable to the greed and lust of a man's world... MELISSA HUNTOON She stood on the spacious, pillared veranda of her ancestral home, Great Oaks, looking out over the broad acres that had belonged ...

  • Love's Sweet Agony

    REBECCA HAWKINS She was young, beautiful and used to winning. But at nineteen her ideas of victory were confined to equestrian contests and harness racing. Now, as her womanly graces began to attract men, it would be a different kind of competitio...

  • Tides of Love

    The magnificent saga of a woman swept up by passion and torn between two loves. The violent sea threw them together only to tear them apart yet again... Out of a band of violent men, shipwreckers all, came Marianna Harper--a girl so unkempt t...

  • Flames of Glory

    SHE WAS TORN FROM THE ARMS OF LOVE AND IMPRISONED IN THE HOT EMBRACE OF PASSION... Sultry Tampa, crossroad for gallant soldiers of the Spanish-American War, was the beloved home of young Jessica Manning. Her elegance and delicate beauty entranced...

  • Embers of Dawn

    The glorious saga of a woman torn between two passionate men and driven toward one burning dream. In a violent age of war and turmoil, she rose from the ashes of battle to seize a wild and passionate dream. In the fiery aftermath of Civil War, ...

  • Dancer of Dreams

    Hannah's Story - 2

    In Colonial Virginia, Hannah Verner --- once indentured servant, now the widow of a wealthy planter --- shocks society by personally supervising her beloved plantation, Malvern. Learning that her husband, who was killed in a mysterious accident, has ...

  • Gambler in Love

    Catharine "Cat" Carnahan grew up on the Erie Canal, working side by side with her father on their boat, towing freight from Albany to Buffalo. Gutsy and independent, she holds her own with the roughnecks who work the canal, including the brut...

  • Tame the Restless Heart

    HER HEART CRIED OUT FOR ONE MAN, BUT SHE WAS HOSTAGE TO ANOTHER. HER NEW, EXCITING WORLD GLITTERED WITH AS MUCH PROMISE AS HER DEEP NEW LOVE. Lovely, talented Laura Purcell married the wrong man for the wrong reasons. Soon she is cut adrift fr...

  • Enchanted

    Surrounded by passion and mystery, she sought tenderness and truth HER HEART CRIED OUT FOR ONE MAN, EVEN AS SHE PROMISED HERSELF TO ANOTHER 1817. Off the coast of South Carolina lay Pirate's Bank, a small island as mysterious and intriguing as...

  • Thursday and the Lady

    1848. America's most unforgettable era. As suffragettes begin their long struggle...as the gold rush spurs glorious optimism...comes a story of a proud, passionate love only the gifted pen of Patricia Matthews can tell. Jemina Benedict refuse...



  • Mirrors

    The door to her past awaited...Dare she unlock its secrets? IN THE STEAMY HEAT OF SOUTHERN NIGHTS, PASSION AND DANGER BURN RED-HOT It was so sudden. So strange. The lawyers. The journey to lush, hot Key West. Could Julie Malone really be Suelle...

  • Oasis

    For the rich... Oasis was a desert paradise, a shimmering Sahara of fabulous wealth, glorious scenery and expensive privacy. For Zoe Tremaine, glamorous matriarch of Oasis, it was a place to forget her past...and preserve her future. For the reckle...

  • The Dreaming Tree

    TO AUSTRALIA THEY CAME Convicts, banished from England, were sent to serve out their sentences in the primitive and unforgiving headlands on Botany Bay. It was here in Sydney Town that they and their offspring braved famine and treachery to build ...

  • Sapphire

    A NOVEL OF LOVE AND PASSION AS BRILLIANT AS THE PRECIOUS GEM FROM LONDON TO EXOTIC INDIA TO GLITTERING NEW YORK -- HER PASSION FOR GEMS LEADS HER TO FORTUNE...AND LOVE From the moment her eyes first catch the magical brilliance of the star sapp...

  • The Death of Love

    Policewoman Maggie Murphy's moonlighting as a mystery/romance writer lands her a seat on The Love Express, but when the ringleader of the "we do it for love" tour is found murdered, she finds herself investigating a real mystery...

  • Love's Bold Journey

    RACHEL BONNER looked out the train window, wondering what life would be like out West. She longed for the comfort of her parents, dead since the Civil War, such a short time ago. But she burned with the determination to plunge ahead over any obsta...

  • Unquiet

  • The Scent of Fear

    Casey Farel - 1

    Though Casey Farrell is out of work and forced to sleep in her car, her life gets considerably worse after she accidentally witnesses the latest in aserial killer's long string of murders. Though she's not the type he likes to murder, the killer know...

  • Vision of Death

    Casey Farel - 2

    When the bodies of five illegal aliens are found in the desert, Casey Farrel, a member of the Governor of Arizona's task force on crime, is assigned to investigate the case. She finds that the trail leads back to two of the richest and most powerful ...

  • Taste of Evil

    Casey Farel - 3

    A bull-rider is killed, but it is murder, not an accident; and Casey Farel, intrigued by the fact that the rider has the same last name as her own, is reluctantly drawn into the investigation....



  • Sound of Murder

    Casey Farel - 4

    In her fourth case, Casey Farrell teams up with her lover, Sergeant Josh Whitney, to investigate after witnessing a country singer's murder, uncovering a dangerous underside of the music business....

  • Touch of Terror

    Casey Farel - 5

    Investigator Casey Farrel goes undercover to solve a series of murders neara resort town in northern Arizona. Ritual aspects of the crimes suggest cult links. Casey poses as a movie scout to explore the area and meet town residents despite concerns o...

  • The Secret of Secco Canyon

    Joan Lowery Nixon, president of the Mystery Writers of America, has found 10 well-known writers to craft spellbinding stories for adults who want to read but have undeveloped reading skills. Here are stories with adult themes and interests that chall...

  • Dead Man Riding

  • Death in the Desert

  • Rendezvous at Midnight

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Patricia Matthews has published 35 books.

Patricia Matthews does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, Rendezvous at Midnight, was published in November 2003.

The first book by Patricia Matthews, Love's Avenging Heart, was published in January 1977.

Yes. Patricia Matthews has 2 series.
Pseudonyms / Co-Author
Author Series
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