Prolific novelist Jackie Collins, 77

LOS ANGELES - Jackie Collins, 77, the best-selling author of dozens of novels, including

Hollywood Wives

, that dramatized the lives of the rich and treacherous, has died.

Publicist Melody Korenbrot said Ms. Collins died of breast cancer Saturday in Los Angeles.

Her death was first reported by People Magazine.

"I am completely devastated," said older sister Joan, 82, the Dynasty star, told People. "She was my best friend. She was a wonderful, brave, and a beautiful person, and I love her."

According to the magazine, Ms. Collins was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer six years ago and chose to keep her illness almost entirely to herself, confiding primarily in her three daughters, Tracy, 54; Tiffany, 48; and Rory, 46.

In what would be her last interview, Ms. Collins told the magazine that she had no regrets about the decision to keep her cancer private while she embraced a very full life until her very last days. "Looking back, I'm not sorry about anything I did," she said.

"I did it my way, as Frank Sinatra would say."

Unlike Joan, who was a direct part of the 1980s Hollywood glitterati, Jackie Collins chose to document L.A. lives in her pulpy, page-turning fiction.

Ms. Collins wrote what she knew, and that meant stories of sex, glamour, power, and more sex, a lot more sex. She began her literary career saying more than some wanted to hear, and eventually became the kind of author from whom readers could never get enough, providing a precursor to the culture of Desperate Housewives and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

Ms. Collins told the Associated Press in a 2011 interview that she "never felt bashful writing about sex."

"As a writer, you can never think about who is going to read your books. Is it going to be my mom? My children? . . . Sex is a driving force in the world, so I don't think it's unusual that I write about sex. I try to make it erotic, too."

Born Jacqueline Jill Collins in London in 1937, her first novel, The World Is Full of Married Men, was a story of sex and show business set in "Swinging London" in the mid-1960s. It came out in 1968 and became a scandalous best-seller, banned in Australia and condemned by romance writer Barbara Cartland.

"Barbara Cartland said to me, 'Oh, Miss Collins, your books are filthy and disgusting and you are responsible for all the perverts in England,' " Ms. Collins told Porter Magazine in 2014. "I pause for a few moments and said, 'Thank you.' "

Ms. Collins followed in the 1970s with books like The World Is Full of Divorced Women and Lovers & Gamblers.

In recent years, Ms. Collins took to Twitter, and many were using Twitter to mourn her Saturday night, including Oprah Winfrey, who tweeted: "RIP Jackie Collins. I always loved our interviews."

Ms. Collins was married twice, the second time to art gallery and nightclub owner Oscar Lerman in 1965. Lerman died in 1992. She was then engaged to Los Angeles businessman Frank Calcagnini, who died in 1998.

Asked by the AP in 2011 if she was dating anyone, Ms. Collins said: "I have a man for every occasion."