Jenny Elder Moke Books In Order

Publication Order of Samantha Knox Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Jenny Elder Moke is a bestselling author of mystery and young adult fantasy fiction works best known for the Samantha Knox series. Before she became a novelist, she worked in Austin, Texas, at an independent publishing house before she realized that she loved writing the manuscripts rather than reading them. Moke studied writing under Liz Garton Scanlon before she gained enough confidence to start writing. For some time, she wrote in just about any genre format and even made the final shortlist for the 2017 Austin Film Festival Fiction Podcast Competition for Target her podcast script. She is a member of the Texas Writer’s League and when she is not penning her bestsellers, she can be found trying to hone her martial ars skills in Tae Kwon Do or gathering inspiration from her daily adventures. Jenny currently makes her home in Austin, Texas, alongside her husband and two children.

Moke’s love for storytelling began while she was still very young. Right from her earlier days, she loved big action/adventure, high-concept type stories. Jenny Elder loved how such stories transported her far away from the banal into the fantastic as she went on breathtaking rides that left her hair standing on end. During her childhood, she loved stories such as Transformers, Indiana Jones, and The Mummy, which at some point was her favorite movie of all time. Even as an adult, she sometimes goes back to revisit the stories she loved as a child. For much of her teenage and childhood years, she used to pen little snippets here and there, but she never got serious about it until after she got out of college. While working in publishing in Austin, Texas, which she sometimes felt was a dream job, she still felt that something was missing in her life. In the evenings, she began working on her story and found it to be an exhilarating experience like no other. Her story possessed her, and even though she was terrible at writing, once she was done writing, there was no going back. It was then that she signed up at Austin Community College for a children’s literature class.

For Jenny Eldr Moke, writing her manuscript was the easy part as her road toward publishing was tumultuous to say the least. She likes to compare it to a tall waterslide in which she spent years in a dark tunnel before she was spat out into the pool at the other side. Jenny spent nearly ten years writing and working with critique groups as she dreamed of one day becoming a published author. After querying for years without success, she was ready to walk away in 2017 when a friend told her about a fictional podcast competition in Austin. Her entry made the final shortlist, but it was when she submitted to Amy Trueblood and Michelle Hauck’s Sun vs. Snow pitch competition that she finally got her breakthrough. Soon enough, she was getting requests from agents and on submission, she got an offer from Disney.

As for the inspiration for her debut novel, Jenny Elder Moke found it while watching Robin Hood on the BBC in the early 2000s. The BBC version was a cheeky and fun work, even though it still has some consequences for the characters and some serious plot lines. While she knew all about Robin Hood, she had never seen him portrayed in that manner. Most of the time, the work was shown in either a very campy or very serious way. In the BBC version, the show straddled the line between campy and serious, which she found to be an interesting take. Given that she was dreaming of becoming a young adult fiction novelists, he thought it would be interesting to write something from the perspective of his daughter.

Jenny Elder Moke’s Curse of the Specter Queen is a work that is Indiana Jones reborn but with a female lead. The work is set in the 1920s and is full of adventure, mystery, heart-stopping action, ancient relics, and ciphers. When her father failed to return following the conclusion of the Great War, Smantha Knox thought her dream of having archeological adventures was dead. Moke retreats to the bookshop where she works, but then her life is turned upside down when a damaged diary is delivered to her. It does seem that the diary has some critical information, and some ruthless men will do anything to get their hands on it. Sam and her childhood crush and best friend flee and go on an interestign adventure that leads them to Dublin, Ireland. On the green hills of Ireland, they stumble upon an ancient order that is planning an occult ritual that will raise the Celtic goddess of vengeance and death, the Specter Queen. If they are successful, it would result in a brutal war unlike anything ever seen before. To stop the order, Sam needs to solve what he soon discovers is a very complex and devious cipher. It is a puzzle that leads her on a quest to find an ancient relic that is believed to be a bowl carved from the tree of life.

Jenny Elder Moke once again proved that the first of the Samantha Knox series was not a fluke when she published Rise of the Snake Goddess. This time around, Samantha is in Crete just off the Greece coast where she goes into an old abandoned cave shrine to find the golden girdle of the ancient Snake Goddess. During her first semester, her archeology professor had belittled her to no end, and now she thinks she can prove her worth. But before she can report the find, the girdle goes missing, and the island experiences several earthquakes that may have been caused by their activities. It is not long before Jo, Bennet, and Sam find themselves in a wild hunt that takes them to a glamorous auction party, tiny island shops, and a near-death experience as they try to locate the girdle before someone evil can.