Ellen Baker

Ellen Baker is the author of the novels Summerland Cove (Mariner, June 2026) and The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson (Mariner, February 2024), which was the HarperCollins Lead Read for Winter 2024, an Indie Next pick, and a People and Woman’s World Best New Book. Authors including Lisa Wingate, Tara Conklin, Kim Michele Richardson, Thao Thai and Kristin Harmel praised it respectively as “colorful,” “gorgeous,” “electrifying,” “riveting” and “beautiful.”

Ellen’s earlier novels, Keeping the House (Random House, 2007) and I Gave My Heart to Know This (Random House, 2011), 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 is now a midlife reinvention coach and Founder of the The Next Chapter Studio for high-achieving women ready to stop proving, start living, and author what comes next.