Jacqueline Jill "Jackie" Collins

 Jacqueline Jill "Jackie" Collins OBE (October 4, 1937 – September 19, 2015)

She was an author and younger sister of Joan Collins. She moved to Los Angeles in the 1960s, where she lived, became a U.S. citizen and spent most of her career. She wrote 32 novels, all of which appeared on The New York Times bestsellers list. In total, her books have sold over 500 million copies and have been translated into 40 languages. Collins' first novel, The World Is Full of Married Men, was published in 1968. She had begun many works of fiction, but had abandoned them, and only completed her first novel after being persuaded to do so by her second husband Oscar Lerman. "You’re a storyteller", he told her. After publication, romantic novelist Barbara Cartland, called it "nasty, filthy and disgusting" and charged Collins with "creating every pervert in Britain". It was banned in Australia and South Africa, but the scandal bolstered sales in the United States and the UK. Her second novel, The Stud, was published in 1969. It also made the bestseller lists. Collins' third novel, Sunday Simmons & Charlie Brick (first published under the title The Hollywood Zoo in the UK and then retitled Sinners worldwide in 1984) was published in 1971 and again made the bestseller lists. This was Collins' first novel to be set in the United States. Lovehead followed in 1974 (retitled as The Love Killers in 1989). This novel was Collins' first foray into the world of organized crime, a genre that would later prove to be extremely successful for her.Collins continued her writing career through 2015, with her final novel The Santangelos (2015), a conclusion to her Santangelo series of novels that she had begun with Chances in 1981. Collins died on September 19, 2015 of breast cancer, two weeks before her 78th birthday. She was diagnosed about six years earlier, but kept news of the illness to herself, and only told her sister Joan shortly before she died. Collins is interred at Westwood Memorial Park.