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Ellen Hopkins is a renowned American author of multiple New York Times bestselling young adult novels.

Born in Long Beach, California, and adopted by Valerie and Albert C. Wagner, Ellen has loved writing for as long as she can remember.

Some of her most popular books include: Crank, Identical and Burned, which put a spotlight on delicate teenage issues such as, psychological problems, prostitution, and drug addiction–among other challenges which young people face today.

Crank–which won several awards such as the 2005 Charlotte Award, 2005 IRA Young Adult Choices Award, 2006 Kentucky Bluegrass Award, and the 2006 SSLI Honor Book Award–was inspired by real life events which happened in Ellen’s life between 1971 and 1995.

Ellen lives in Carson City, Nevada, with her husband and son.

More about Ellen Hopkins

Genres: Literary Fiction, Young Adult

Born: 1955

United States

Website: http://www.ellenhopkinsbooks.com/

Non Series

  • Identical (2008)
  • Collateral (2012)
  • Rumble (2014)
  • The You I've Never Known (2017)
  • People Kill People (2018)
  • Closer to Nowhere (2020)
  • What About Will? (2021)

Anthologies

  1. A New Dawn (Edited by Ellen Hopkins) (2009)

Burned

  1. Burned (2006)
  2. Smoke (2013)

Collections

  1. Grim (2014)

Crank

  1. Crank (2004)
  2. Glass (2007)
  3. Fallout (2010)

Impulse

  1. Impulse (2007)
  2. Perfect (2011)

Love Lies Beneath

  1. Love Lies Beneath (2015)
  2. A Sin Such as This (2018)

Triangles

  1. Triangles (2011)
  2. Tilt (2012)

Tricks

  1. Tricks (2009)
  2. Traffick (2015)
Collections

Detailed book overview

Non Series

Identical

Kaeleigh and Raeanne are 16-year-old identical twins, the daughters of a district court judge father and politician mother running for US Congress.

Everything on the surface seems fine, but underneath run very deep and damaging secrets. What really happened when the girls were 7 years old in that car accident that Daddy caused? And why is Mom never home, always running far away to pursue some new dream?

Raeanne goes after painkillers, drugs, alcohol, and sex to dull her pain and anger. Kaeleigh always tries so hard to be the good girl -- her father's perfect little flower. But when the girls were 9, Daddy started to turn to his beloved Kaeleigh in ways a father never should and has been sexually abusing her for years.

For Raeanne, she needs to numb the pain of not being Daddy's favorite; for Kaeleigh, she wants to do everything she can to feel something normal, even if it means cutting herself and vomiting after every binge.

How Kaeleigh and Raeanne figure out just what it means to be whole again when their entire world has been torn to shreads is the guts and heart of this powerful, disturbing, and utterly remarkable book.

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2008
ISBN: 978-1416950066
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Collateral

The last thing Ashley ever expected was to end up a military wife. But Cole doesn’t match her stereotype of the aggressive Marine. He’s pas­sionate and romantic, and their relationship evolves into a deeply felt, sexually charged love affair that survives four deployments.

Cole desper­ately wants Ashley to marry him, but when she meets another man, a college professor, she begins to see what life might be like outside the shadow of war.

Written in Ellen Hopkins’s stunning poetic verse style, Collateral cap­tures the hearts of the soldiers on the battlefield and the minds of their friends, family, and lovers who also sacrifice their lives and happiness for their country at war. Is the collateral damage worth the fight?

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2012
ISBN: 978-1451626384
Publisher: Atria Books
Rumble

Matthew Turner knows it doesn’t get better.

His younger brother Luke was bullied mercilessly after one of Matt’s friends outed Luke to the whole school, and when Luke called Matt—on the brink of suicide—Matt was too wrapped up in his new girlfriend to answer the phone. Now Luke is gone, and Matt’s family is falling apart.

No matter what his girlfriend Hayden says about forgiveness, there’s no way Matt’s letting those he blames off the hook—including himself. As Matt spirals further into bitterness, he risks losing Hayden, the love of his life. But when her father begins to pressure the school board into banning books because of their homosexual content, he begins to wonder if he and Hayden ever had anything in common.

With brilliant sensitivity and emotional resonance, bestselling author Ellen Hopkins’s Rumble explores bullying and suicide in a powerful story that examines the value of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2014
ISBN: 978-1442482852
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
The You I've Never Known

For as long as she can remember, it’s been just Ariel and Dad. Ariel’s mom disappeared when she was a baby. Dad says home is wherever the two of them are, but Ariel is now seventeen and after years of new apartments, new schools, and new faces, all she wants is to put down some roots. Complicating things are Monica and Gabe, both of whom have stirred a different kind of desire.

Maya’s a teenager who’s run from an abusive mother right into the arms of an older man she thinks she can trust. But now she’s isolated with a baby on the way, and life’s getting more complicated than Maya ever could have imagined.

Ariel and Maya’s lives collide unexpectedly when Ariel’s mother shows up out of the blue with wild accusations: Ariel wasn’t abandoned. Her father kidnapped her fourteen years ago.

In bestselling author Ellen Hopkins’s deft hands, Ariel’s emotionally charged journey to find out the truth of who she really is balances beautifully with Maya’s story of loss and redemption. This is a memorable portrait of two young women trying to make sense of their lives and coming face to face with themselves—for both the last and the very first time.

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2017
ISBN: 978-1481442916
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
People Kill People

"People kill people. Guns just make it easier."

A gun is sold in the classifieds after killing a spouse, bought by a teenager for needed protection. But which was it? Each has the incentive to pick up a gun, to fire it. Was it Rand or Cami, married teenagers with a young son? Was it Silas or Ashlyn, members of a white supremacist youth organization? Daniel, who fears retaliation because of his race, who possessively clings to Grace, the love of his life? Or Noelle, who lost everything after a devastating accident, and has sunk quietly into depression?

One tense week brings all six people into close contact in a town wrought with political and personal tensions. Someone will fire. And someone will die. But who?

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2018
ISBN: 978-1481442947
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Closer to Nowhere

For the most part, Hannah's life is just how she wants it. She has two supportive parents, she's popular at school, and she's been killing it at gymnastics. But when her cousin Cal moves in with her family, everything changes.

Cal tells half-truths and tall tales, pranks Hannah constantly, and seems to be the reason her parents are fighting more and more. Nothing is how it used to be. She knows that Cal went through a lot after his mom died and she is trying to be patient, but most days Hannah just wishes Cal never moved in.

For his part, Cal is trying his hardest to fit in, but not everyone is as appreciative of his unique sense of humor and storytelling gifts as he is. Humor and stories might be his defense mechanism, but if Cal doesn't let his walls down soon, he might push away the very people who are trying their best to love him.

Told in verse from the alternating perspectives of Hannah and Cal, this is a story of two cousins who are more alike than they realize and the family they both want to save.

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2020
ISBN: 978-0593108635
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
What About Will?

Twelve-year-old Trace Reynolds has always looked up to his brother, mostly because Will, who's five years older, has never looked down on him.

It was Will who taught Trace to ride a bike, would watch sports on TV with him, and cheer him on at Little League. But when Will was knocked out cold during a football game, resulting in a brain injury--everything changed.

Now, seventeen months later, their family is still living under the weight of "the incident," that left Will with a facial tic, depression, and an anger he cannot always control, culminating in their parents' divorce.

Afraid of further fracturing his family, Trace begins to cover for Will who, struggling with addiction to pain medication, becomes someone Trace doesn’t recognize.

But when the brother he loves so much becomes more and more withdrawn, and escalates to stealing money and ditching school, Trace realizes some secrets cannot be kept if we ever hope to heal.

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2021
Ebook: B08XH6BMLC
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers

Anthologies

A New Dawn (Edited by Ellen Hopkins)

Fans of the literary phenomenon known as the Twilight series can't help wanting more. A New Dawn gives it to them, inviting readers to join some of their favorite YA authors as they look at the series with fresh eyes and fall in love with Edward, Bella, and the rest of Forks, Wash., all over again.

Edited by bestselling author Ellen Hopkins, A New Dawn is packed with the same debates readers engage in with friends: Should Bella have chosen Edward or Jacob? How much control do Meyer's vampires and werewolves really have over their own lives? The collection also goes further: Is Edward a romantic or a (really hot) sociopath? How do the Quileute werewolves compare to other Native American wolf myths? What does the Twilight series have in common with Shakespeare?

With contributions from Megan McCafferty, Cassandra Clare, Rachel Caine, and many more, A New Dawn answers these questions and more for a teen (and adult!) audience hungry for clever, view-changing commentary on their favorite series.

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2009
ISBN: 978-1933771939
Publisher: Smart Pop

Burned

Burned

"I do know things really began to spin out of control after my first sex dream."

It all started with a dream. Nothing exceptional, just a typical fantasy about a boy, the kind of dream that most teen girls experience. But Pattyn Von Stratten is not like most teen girls. Raised in a religious -- yet abusive -- family, a simple dream may not be exactly a sin, but it could be the first step toward hell and eternal damnation.

This dream is a first step for Pattyn. But is it to hell or to a better life? For the first time Pattyn starts asking questions. Questions seemingly without answers -- about God, a woman's role, sex, love -- mostly love. What is it? Where is it? Will she ever experience it? Is she deserving of it?

It's with a real boy that Pattyn gets into real trouble. After Pattyn's father catches her in a compromising position, events spiral out of control until Pattyn ends up suspended from school and sent to live with an aunt she doesn't know.

Pattyn is supposed to find salvation and redemption during her exile to the wilds of rural Nevada. Yet what she finds instead is love and acceptance. And for the first time she feels worthy of both -- until she realizes her old demons will not let her go. Pattyn begins down a path that will lead her to a hell -- a hell that may not be the one she learned about in sacrament meetings, but it is hell all the same.

In this riveting and masterful novel told in verse, Ellen Hopkins takes readers on an emotional roller-coaster ride. From the highs of true love to the lows of abuse, Pattyn's story will have readers engrossed until the very last word.

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2006
ISBN: 978-1442494619
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Smoke

Pattyn Von Stratten’s father is dead, and Pattyn is on the run. After far too many years of abuse at the hands of her father, and after the tragic loss of her beloved Ethan and their unborn child, Pattyn is desperate for peace.

Only her sister Jackie knows what happened that fatal night, but she is stuck at home with their mother, who clings to normalcy by allowing the truth to be covered up by their domineering community leaders. Her father might be finally gone, but without Pattyn, Jackie is desperately isolated.

Alone and in disguise, Pattyn starts a new life as a migrant worker on a California ranch. But is it even possible to rebuild a life when everything you’ve known has burned to ash and lies seem far safer than the truth?

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2013
ISBN: 978-1416983293
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

Collections

Grim

Inspired by classic fairy tales, but with a dark and sinister twist, Grim contains short stories from some of the best voices in young adult literature today:

Ellen Hopkins

Amanda Hocking

Julie Kagawa

Claudia Gray

Rachel Hawkins

Kimberly Derting

Myra McEntire

Malinda Lo

Sarah Rees-Brennan

Jackson Pearce

Christine Johnson

Jeri Smith Ready

Shaun David Hutchinson

Saundra Mitchell

Sonia Gensler

Tessa Gratton

Jon Skrovron

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2014
Ebook: B00FBZL2P6
Publisher: Harlequin Teen

Crank

Crank

Life was good before I met the monster.

After, life was great. At least for a little while.

Kristina Snow is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble.

Then, Kristina meets the monster: crank. And what begins as a wild, ecstatic ride turns into a struggle through hell for her mind, her soul—her life.

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2004
ISBN: 978-1442471818
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Glass

Kristina thinks she can control the urge, the addiction, the monster trying to drag her down. Now with a baby to care for, she's determined to be the one deciding when and how much, the one calling the shots.

But the monster is too strong, and before she knows it, Kristina is back in its grips. She needs the monster to keep going, to face the pressures of day-to-day life. She needs it to feel alive.

Once again the monster takes over Kristina's life and she will do anything for it, including giving up the one person who gives her the unconditional love she craves—her baby.

A vivid portrait of a victim to addiction, this sequel to Crank is the continuing story of Kristina and her descent back to hell. Told in verse, it's a harrowing and disturbing look at addiction and the damage that it inflicts.

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2007
ISBN: 978-1442471825
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Fallout

Hunter, Autumn, and Summer—three of Kristina Snow’s five children—live in different homes, with different guardians and different last names. They share only a predisposition for addiction and a host of troubled feelings toward the mother who barely knows them, a mother who has been riding with the monster, crank, for twenty years.

Hunter is nineteen, angry, getting by in college with a job at a radio station, a girlfriend he loves in the only way he knows how, and the occasional party. He's struggling to understand why his mother left him, when he unexpectedly meets his rapist father, and things get even more complicated.

Autumn lives with her single aunt and alcoholic grandfather. When her aunt gets married, and the only family she’s ever known crumbles, Autumn’s compulsive habits lead her to drink. And the consequences of her decisions suggest that there’s more of Kristina in her than she’d like to believe.

Summer doesn’t know about Hunter, Autumn, or their two youngest brothers, Donald and David. To her, family is only abuse at the hands of her father’s girlfriends and a slew of foster parents. Doubt and loneliness overwhelm her, and she, too, teeters on the edge of her mother’s notorious legacy.

As each searches for real love and true family, they find themselves pulled toward the one person who links them together—Kristina, Bree, mother, addict. But it is in each other, and in themselves, that they find the trust, the courage, the hope to break the cycle.

Told in three voices and punctuated by news articles chronicling the family’s story, FALLOUT is the stunning conclusion to the trilogy begun by CRANK and GLASS, and a testament to the harsh reality that addiction is never just one person’s problem.

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2010
ISBN: 978-1442471801
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

Impulse

Impulse

"Sometimes you don't wake up. But if you happen to, you know things will never be the same."

Three lives, three different paths to the same destination: Aspen Springs, a psychiatric hospital for those who have attempted the ultimate act—suicide.

Vanessa is beautiful and smart, but her secrets keep her answering the call of the blade.

Tony, after suffering a painful childhood, can only find peace through pills.

And Conner, outwardly, has the perfect life. But dig a little deeper and find a boy who is in constant battle with his parents, his life, himself.

In one instant each of these young people decided enough was enough. They grabbed the blade, the bottle, the gun—and tried to end it all. Now they have a second chance, and just maybe, with each other's help, they can find their way to a better life—but only if they're strong and can fight the demons that brought them here in the first place.

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2007
ISBN: 978-1416903574
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Perfect

Everyone has something, someone, somewhere else that they’d rather be. For four high school seniors, their goals of perfection are just as different as the paths they take to get there.

Cara’s parents’ unrealistic expectations have already sent her twin brother Conner spiraling toward suicide. For her, perfect means rejecting their ideals to take a chance on a new kind of love. Kendra covets the perfect face and body—no matter what surgeries and drugs she needs to get there.

To score his perfect home run—on the field and off—Sean will sacrifice more than he can ever win back. And Andre realizes that to follow his heart and achieve his perfect performance, he’ll be living a life his ancestors would never understand.

A riveting and startling companion to the bestselling Impulse, Ellen Hopkins’s Perfect exposes the harsh truths about what it takes to grow up and grow into our own skins, our own selves.

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2011
ISBN: 978-1416983255
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

Love Lies Beneath

Love Lies Beneath

Once a widow, twice divorced, Tara is a woman with a past she prefers to keep hidden. She’s gorgeous, affluent, and content living alone in her flawless San Francisco mansion.

That is, until she meets Cavin Lattimore—the charming surgeon who sweeps her off her feet following a ski accident in Lake Tahoe. But as her recovery progresses and her love life flourishes, Tara notices some suspicious incidents—an unusual van parked outside her home, a break-in, threatening text messages, and distressing emails. She can’t help but notice the cracks in Cavin’s “perfect” persona, including the suppressed rage his conniving teenage son elicits.

Housebound and on crutches, Tara depends on Cavin—perhaps to a dangerous degree—as she juggles difficult relationships with her envious sister and best friend, her irritable brother-in-law, and her estranged mother. However perfect Tara’s life may have appeared before, new events are starting to expose what lies beneath.

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2015
ISBN: 978-1476743660
Publisher: Atria Books
A Sin Such as This

Tara thought she was finally settling down when she married the handsome Dr. Cavin Lattimore. Just as she was willing to overlook his gambling habits, she discovers his secret meetings with Sophia, his gorgeous ex-girlfriend and his son Eli’s occasional girlfriend.

Life gets even more complicated when Tara’s niece, Kayla, starts hooking up with Eli. In a matter of weeks, Tara has reluctantly gone from rich, single San Francisco professional to Lake Tahoe housewife managing her niece’s whiplash moods, while resisting her stepson’s tantalizing sexual advances.

Adding to the family drama is her younger sister, Melody, who’s having a serious marital breakdown, which means she might know something about her husband Graham and Tara’s brief dalliance years ago. As Tara’s fragile trust in her family teeters, timed with the arrival of certain people from her past, she also can’t shake the feeling that someone’s watching her. Baiting her.

Tara has always considered herself a tough, self-made woman after surviving a childhood defined by poverty, abuse, and neglect. For years, she suffered from the sins of others. She committed a few of her own. Now she wonders if the misdeeds of her past are about to catch up with her—and if she can ever outrun them.

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2018
ISBN: 978-1476743684
Publisher: Atria Books

Triangles

Triangles

Holly, filled with regret for being a stay-at-home mom, sheds sixty pounds and loses herself in the world of extramarital sex. But will it truly bring the fulfillment she is searching for?

Andrea, a single mom and avowed celibate, watches her friend Holly’s meltdown with a mixture of concern and contempt. Holly is throwing away what Andrea has spent her whole life searching for—a committed relationship with a decent guy. So would it be such a bad thing if Andrea picks up Holly’s castaway husband?

Marissa has more than her fair share of challenges—a rebellious teenage son, a terminally ill daughter, and a husband who buries himself in his work rather than face the facts.

As one woman’s marriage unravels, another’s rekindles. As one woman’s family comes apart at the seams, another’s reconfigures into something bigger and better. In this story of connections and disconnections, one woman’s up is another one’s down, and all of them will learn the meaning of friendship, betrayal, and forgiveness.

Unflinchingly honest, emotionally powerful, surprisingly erotic, Triangles is the ultimate page-turner. Hopkins’s gorgeous, expertly honed poetic verse perfectly captures the inner lives of her characters: Sometimes it happens like that. Sometimes you just get lost.

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2011
ISBN: 978-1451626346
Publisher: Atria Books
Tilt

Three teens, three stories—all interconnected through their parents’ family relationships. As the adults pull away, caught up in their own dilemmas, the lives of the teens begin to tilt...​

Mikayla, almost eighteen, is over-the-top in love with Dylan, who loves her back. But what happens to that love when Mikayla gets pregnant the summer before their senior year—and decides to keep the baby?

Shane turns sixteen that same summer and falls hard in love with his first boyfriend, Alex, who happens to be HIV positive. Shane has lived for four years with his little sister’s impending death. Can he accept Alex’s love, knowing that his life, too, will be shortened?

Harley is fourteen—a good girl searching for new experiences, especially love from an older boy. She never expects to hurdle toward self-destructive extremes in order to define who she is and who she wants to be.

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2012
ISBN: 978-1416983316
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

Tricks

Tricks

"When all choice is taken from you, life becomes a game of survival."

Five teenagers from different parts of the country. Three girls. Two guys. Four straight. One gay. Some rich. Some poor. Some from great families. Some with no one at all. All living their lives as best they can, but all searching…for freedom, safety, community, family, love. What they don’t expect, though, is all that can happen when those powerful little words “I love you” are said for all the wrong reasons.

Five moving stories remain separate at first, then interweave to tell a larger, powerful story—a story about making choices, taking leaps of faith, falling down, and growing up. A story about kids figuring out what sex and love are all about, at all costs, while asking themselves, “Can I ever feel okay about myself?”

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2009
ISBN: 978-1481498241
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Traffick

In her bestselling novel, Tricks, Ellen Hopkins introduced us to five memorable characters tackling these enormous questions: Eden, the preacher’s daughter who turns tricks in Vegas and is helped into a child prostitution rescue; Seth, the gay farm boy disowned by his father who finds himself without money or resources other than his own body; Whitney, the privileged kid coaxed into the life by a pimp and whose dreams are ruined in a heroin haze; Ginger, who runs away from home with her girlfriend and is arrested for soliciting an undercover cop; and Cody, whose gambling habit forces him into the life, but who is shot and left for dead.

And now, in Traffick, these five are faced with the toughest question of all: Is there a way out? How these five teenagers face the aftermath of their decisions and experiences is the soul of this story that exposes the dark, ferocious underbelly of the child trafficking trade. Heartwrenching and hopeful, Traffick takes us on five separate but intertwined journeys through the painful challenges of recovery, rehabilitation, and renewal to forgiveness and love. All the way home.

Author: Ellen Hopkins
First Release: 2015
ISBN: 978-1442482883
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books