Six Published Books · New Release Out Now
I'm Margaret Ellison, a novelist of literary fiction, mystery, and historical fiction. Buy signed hardcovers and paperbacks directly, and get first access to new releases, readings, and book club notes.
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Latest & Best-Loved
Three novels that readers return to again and again — each available as a signed hardcover or paperback.
New Release On a windswept stretch of the Maine coast, widowed botanist Nora Fenwick returns to the estate where she grew up to salvage her mother's legendary garden — and uncovers letters that rewrite everything she believed about her family. A luminous novel about inheritance, grief, and the things we cultivate in silence.
When a lighthouse keeper's logbook washes ashore in a seaside village, retired inspector June Halloran is pulled back into a disappearance the town agreed to forget thirty years ago. A taut, atmospheric mystery about memory, complicity, and the stories communities tell to keep the dark at bay.
Vienna, 1911. Ilse Brandt has spent her life coloring in the maps her famous father draws — until a commission for an expedition into uncharted territory gives her the chance to chart her own course. An sweeping novel of ambition and artistry set against the last golden age of exploration.
The Complete Collection
Twelve years of work, six books. Every copy ordered here is signed personally.
Told entirely in correspondence between two neighbors whose orchards share a single ancient apple tree, this epistolary novel traces forty years of friendship, rivalry, and quiet love in a small Hudson Valley town.
Three siblings reunite in their late father's floating architecture studio — a marvel of glass and steel moored in Seattle's harbor — to decide whether to sell it or save it. Over one long weekend, the family's carefully arranged history begins to crack.
Margaret Ellison's celebrated debut collection: twelve stories of ordinary people at the hinge of an ordinary day — a night auditor, a beekeeper, a girl delivering newspapers — each one lit from within by the author's trademark precision and warmth.
About the Author
Margaret Ellison is the author of six books, including the nationally bestselling The Salt Garden and the Edgar-nominated mystery A Quiet Tide. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, and Ploughshares, and has been translated into fourteen languages.
She writes from a converted boathouse on the coast of Maine, where she lives with far too many houseplants and one opinionated cat. She teaches an annual fiction workshop and appears at book festivals across the country each spring.
Praise
“Ellison has an unmatched ability to find the extraordinary hiding inside ordinary lives. Every one of her novels feels like coming home to a house you didn't know you owned.”
The Atlantic Review
On The Salt Garden
“A writer of rare patience and precision. Her sentences are rooms you want to live in — every detail placed with intention.”
Booklist
Starred review, Letters from the Orchard
“From her debut story collection to her latest novel, Ellison has quietly built one of the most consistent bodies of work in contemporary fiction.”
The Literary Review
Author profile
Contact
Whether you'd like to reserve signed copies, invite me to your bookstore, festival, or book club, or arrange an interview — I'd love to hear from you.