by Carol Ellis is an American author of young adult and children’s fiction. Her first novel, My Secret Admirer, was published in 1989 by Scholastic as part of their popular Point Thriller line. She wrote several more Point Thrillers over the next few years; Camp Fear, The Stalker, and The Window, to name just a few. She went on to write over fifteen novels in all, including a few titles in the Zodiac Chillers series published by Random House in the mid-1990s, and two titles in The Blair Witch Files series for young adults, published by Bantam between 2000 and 2001. Not much else is available online about Mrs. Ellis, who, according to Wikipedia, was born in 1945 and lives with her husband in New York.
To browse the list of her titles currently available in print and eBook editions, click here.
These cover scans are from the library of author Christopher Fulbright.
Hello and thank you for this! I’m Carol Ellis’ son and this was a delight to read! Not sure how I missed it since I’ve been a fan of your website for a few years now. Anyway, I’m happy to report she’s alive and well, albeit retired from writing for a bit. She had continued to do educational writing, and some other miscellaneous teen and tween material, off and on for several years after the YA horror/thriller boom ended.
Not sure if this is of interest, but her writing career actually predates “My Secret Admirer” by a few years. She had started in the late 70s/early 80s writing teen romance novels before joining the horror boom. It was a somewhat similar trajectory for a number of writers of that era including, on a much bigger scale, Christopher Pike (he and my mother both wrote entries in the “Cheerleaders” series) and R. L. Stine, who had worked with my parents at Scholastic Publishing in the 70s. As I’m sure will come as no surprise, my mom ghostwrote many “Goosebumps” and “Fear Street” books for Stine. In fact, for quite a while that became her principal writing output. There is indeed a dearth of info about her online, and I’ve seen photographs, none of them of her, and books listed as by her that she didn’t write. Her 1990 historical ghost story, “A Cry in the Night,” part of the Scholastic Apple line for younger readers, never seems to turn up in lists of her books. That’s a shame since I know she particularly enjoyed writing it.
My mother always considered herself a suspense/thriller writer and would sometimes lightheartedly profess a dislike for horror. She’s a big mystery fan to this day but she has admired certain horror novels over the years, including “The Haunting of Hill House” and “Rosemary’s Baby.” In keeping with the “hired gun” theme of her career, she often says she’d be happy to write again, but only if someone gave her the plot!
Anyway, I really appreciate this post of yours. She’s frequently amazed that anyone remembers or cares about her work, despite plenty of evidence that they do. Again, many thanks for this and for all your work!