Ellen Klages Books In Order

Publication Order of The Gordon Family Saga Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of The WisCon Chronicles Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Ellen Klages
Author Ellen Klages was born in Columbus, Ohio on July 9, 1954, yet has lived in San Francisco for over forty years. She has a philosophy degree from the University of Michigan.

In the year 1992, she started working at the San Francisco Exploratorium, where she got selected to co-write a children’s science activity book with Pat Murphy, a science fiction author. Murphy encouraged her to write her own stories too.

“The Green Glass Sea” won the New Mexico State Book Award for Young Adult Literature, the Lopez Award for Children’s Literature, and the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction. It was also a finalist for the Locus Award, and the Northern California Book Award, and the Quills Award. A sequel, “White Sands, Red Menace”, won the New Mexico and California Book awards in the Young Adult category. “Wakulla Springs” won the World Fantasy Award in 2014 and her novelette “Basement Magic” won the Nebula in 2005.

Many of Ellen’s other stories have been on the final ballots for numerous awards. They’ve been translated into Swedish, German, Polish, French, Chinese, Hungarian, and Japanese.

Her short fiction has appeared in fantasy and science fiction magazines and anthologies, both in print and online, including Black Gate, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Firebirds Rising.

Ellen is a graduate of the Second City Conservatory, the Clarion South Workshop, and served for twenty years on the Motherboard of the James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award.

She is known for doing stand up comedy and other performances as an auctioneer at WisCon. She has auctioned off her own hair, a hand knitted uterus, Mary Doria Russell’s brassiere, a kangaroo-scrotum purse, a Xena lawn butt, and a cherry pie.

When she is not busy writing fiction, she sells old magazines and toys on eBay, and collects lead civilians. Ellen lives in a tiny house filled with wondrous and odd things: strange toys, lead civilians, postcards, and other bits of whimsy that strike her fancy.

“Time Gypsy” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 1998. A modern postdoctoral physicist is allowed the chance of a lifetime: travel backward in time and meet Dr. Sara Baxter Clarke, her heroine. However there is something else which Carol McCullough never could’ve expected in the shockingly oppressive world of 1956: Love.

This is a journey into the past where academic rivalry, romance, and time travel all intersect. Where the scientists are women and have got hearts and brains.

“The Green Glass Sea” is the first novel in the “Gordon Family Saga” series and was released in 2006. 1943. Dewey Kerrigan, age eleven, travels west by train in order to live with her scientist dad, however nobody, not her dad nor the military guardians accompanying her, are telling her where he is exactly.

When she gets to Los Alamos, New Mexico, she learns why: he works on this top secret government program. Over the next couple years, she gets to know eminent scientists, begins tinkering with mechanical projects of her own, befriends a budding artist that is just as much of a misfit as she herself is. The whole time, has no clue just how the Manhattan Project is about to alter the world.

“White Sands, Red Menace” is the second novel in the “Gordon Family Saga” series and was released in 2008. The year is 1946, and World War II has ended, concluded by the atomic bomb which Suze Gordon’s and Dewey Kerrigan’s scientist parents helped build. Dewey has been living with the Gordon family since before the end of the war, before her dad died, moving south with them to Alamogrodo, New Mexico.

At the White Sands Missile Range, Phil Gordon works on rockets which someday are going to the moon; while back home, Terry Gordon is part of the scientists’ movement against the Bomb.

Dewey and Suze have got conflicts of their own to worry about. Where does a girl that likes math and physics fit in? How does somebody know the right time to speak up and the right time to just keep your head down? Most importantly, what truly defines a family?

“Out of Left Field” is the third novel in the “Gordon Family Saga” series and was released in 2018. A story about the battle for equal rights in America’s favorite arena: the baseball field.

Each and every boy in the neighborhood knows that their best pitcher is Katy Gordon, even though she is a girl. However when she tries out for Little League, it is an entirely different story. Girls aren’t eligible, period, end of story. It’s a boy’s game and always has been. This is not fair, and Katy is going to fight back.

Inspired by what she is learning about civil rights in school, she sets out to prove that she is not the only girl that plays baseball. With some help from some friendly librarians and a bit of tenacious researching skills, she learns the forgotten history of female baseball players. Why doesn’t anybody know about them? Where are they now? How can just one ten year old change people’s minds about what girls can do?

Set in 1957, a world of saddle shoes, Sputnik, Leave it to Beaver, “Heartbreak Hotel”, this is both a detailed portrait of a fascinating historic period and is a timeless inspiring tale about standing up for equality at every age.

“Passing Strange” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2017. In 1940, San Francisco is a haven for the unconventional. Tourists flock to all of the cities within the city. There is the Magic City of the World’s Fair on an island created of illusion and artifice; the forbidden city of Chinatown, which is an alien and separate of exotic nightclubs and food which offer “authentic” experiences, right out of the pages of the pulps. As well as the twilight world of forbidden love, where outcasts from conventional society are able to meet.

Six women discover their lives getting mixed up with one another’s while they are in the city they call their home. They find danger and love on the borders where science, mystery, and art all intersect.