Elissa Sussman Books In Order

Publication Order of Four Sisters Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Elissa Sussman is a young adult romance and general romance author from Los Angeles that is best known for the “Stray” series of novels. Earlier on, she went to Sarah Lawrence College where she earned her bachelor’s degree.
Before she became a bestselling author she was skilled at organizing spreadsheets and managing animators at some of the best animation studios in the United States.

During her stint, she worked for the likes of Sony Imageworks, Nickelodeon, Dreamworks, and Disney. As such, she has been credited in many blockbuster works that include Tangled, The Croods, The Princess and the Frog, and Hotel Transylvania.

Elissa published “Stray” her debut novel in 2014 before penning her breakout young adult novel “Funny You Should Ask” in 2022. Since she had always been a reader of romance fiction, it just seemed like a natural progression from young adult works.

When there was a lull in the popularity of romance novels, she decided to ghostwrite some adult romance and found it a lot of fun. This was when she decided to pen her own and was surprised at how big “Funny You Should Ask” became.

Sussman currently makes her home in Los Angeles where she lives with her boyfriend and Basil their rescue dog.

As for how he started writing, Sussman has said that he has always been a scribbler that kept journals ever since she was in elementary school.

Similar to most of her contemporaries, she used to be a child with a huge imagination and an even bigger obsession with books.

As a twelve-year-old, she had read Anne Frank’s “The Diary of Anne Frank” and began keeping her journal. It was at this time that she came to understand that a writer was a person that got their title from writing books.
Soon enough, Elissa began writing some terrible poetry and Hannukah plays in addition to gritty short stories and romantic novellas.

She would continue writing stories in high school that she shared with friends and when she went to college, she loved taking fiction classes.

However, she never imagined herself as an author, and hence when she graduated she decided to find what she deemed a more steady job. This would lead her to become a production manager for animated movies while writing became a distant thought.
When she finally realized that film production was not a guarantee of steady work, she decided she needed to pursue her dreams of fiction writing which had taken a backseat.

Elissa Sussman owes her idea for her debut novel Stray to Disney’s Cinderella and a feminist history course. Since she has always been such a nerd, she decided to pen her thesis on how women were portrayed in animated movies.

As she was rewatching some of her favorite animated movies more critically, she had some startling realizations. She realized that one of the most powerful figures in the fairy godmother was portrayed as a rather incompetent and silly character.
Once she was done writing, her road toward getting an agent and publishing her work was very traditional. Happy with her manuscript for Stray, she began doing research on the querying process and how to find agents.

She was lucky that there were so many resources available for her use such as “QueryTracker.” Samantha her current publisher was just one of the more than five dozen she queried over several months.

Once she had signed her on, it would take several months of editing and polishing before the manuscript was bought by Greenwillow Books.

“Funny You Should Ask” by Elissa Sussman is the story of Chani Horowitz, a twenty-something-year-old writer that is stuck.

Many of her former classmates in the MFA program have been nabbing book deals while she remains writing puff pieces in the trenches.

But then she is hired to write the profile of Gabe Parker, a movie star who has been the celebrity she has fantasized about for ages. He has just been cast as the new James Bond, which just makes him more thrilling.
If she does a good job, her career will skyrocket and Gabe will get much-needed positive press. But what happens next is life-changing and nothing she could have seen coming.

What was supposed to be an ordinary interview fast become a wild weekend that gets the tabloids buzzing. A decade later, she has finished a brutal round of therapy following a brutal divorce and she is back in Los Angeles.
But now no matter what video editorial or essay collection she tries to promote, she always gets asked about the very personal profile she wrote about Gabe Parker all those years in the past.

As such, when his public relations team asks that they do a second interview, she wants to say no but she cannot forget the wild night they had spent together.

Elissa Sussman’s novel “Stray” introduces Princess Aislynn, a woman that always felt like she was not good enough.

As a princess, she thought she would grow up to be beautiful and graceful but things never did go as planned. She has magic inside her that is always struggling to get out and she often has some evil thoughts.
In this society, high-born girls usually make their debut aged 16 and if they do not get married after a year, they are made fairy godmothers to other high-born girls.

Aislynn is happy when she turns 16 and makes her debut. But something goes horribly wrong at her ball and instead of meeting her prince, she learns that her fate is to become a fairy godmother.

She is charged with taking care of an orphaned girl named Princess Linnea that had a very rough childhood. Over time the two girls come to realize that they are not that much different from each other.

She also starts to wonder if maybe there is nothing fundamentally wrong with magic. There may be many things Aislynn is ignorant of but she is certain that there are people that care about her and will never let her stray.

“Burn” by Elissa Sussman opens with Elanor finally joining the rebel camp following her heroics in rescuing Princess Aisslynn.

She had been taken away from her parents when she was very young and had been forced to serve the wicked queen. Eleanor is now determined to have the queen stripped of all her power.

But Elanor has mistakes and secrets she has wished to forget for years but the closer the rebels get to deposing the queen the harder it will be for Elanor to keep a lid on her past.

Working with the mysterious and handsome Matthias, Thackery, and Princess Aislynn by her side, Elanor has to make some tough decisions.

Will she risk everything to ensure the safety of her loved ones or will she continue to protect her secrets?