Ellen Baker

Ellen Baker is the author of the novel The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson (Mariner, February 2024), which was the HarperCollins Lead Read for Winter 2024 and has been named by the AARP as one of “21 of Winter’s Top New Books” and by BookBub as one of the “22 best books of Winter.” Authors including Lisa Wingate, Tara Conklin, Kim Michele Richardson, Thao Thai and Kristin Harmel have praised it respectively as “colorful,” “gorgeous,” “electrifying,” “riveting” and “beautiful.”

Ellen’s earlier novels, Keeping the House and I Gave My Heart to Know This (Random House), were called “masterful” (Booklist), “sensitive” (Publisher’s Weekly), “vivid” (Chicago Tribune), and “artful” (Philadelphia Inquirer). Keeping the House won the Great Lakes Book Award and was a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year, as well as an Insider Discovery of the Literary Guild, a featured selection of the Doubleday Book Club and Random House Reader’s Circle, a BookSense Notable Book, and a Midwest Connections Pick.

After living most of her early life in Minnesota and Wisconsin, Ellen fell in love with Maine on a 2010 visit and stayed. A former independent bookseller and museum curator, she loves to chat with book clubs via Zoom and visit libraries, colleges and bookstores to talk about the craft and magic of fiction writing. She lives in Round Pond.