Tara Ellis Books in Order
Explore Tara Ellis books in order, from Samantha Wolf mysteries to big disaster thrillers, with quick summaries, series notes, and easy where-to-start help.
Last updated: July 9, 2026
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Publication Order
41 books
Heritage
by Tara Ellis
2013
Alex survived the first wave, but the world around her is still collapsing. Hunted and running, she digs deeper into Earth's hidden past in search of a way to stop something even worse.
Infected
by Tara Ellis
2013
When a rare meteor shower unleashes a mind-altering infection, Alex watches the people she loves turn into strangers. To save her little brother, she follows her dead father's clues into the mountains and into a much older mystery.
Descent
by Tara Ellis
2014
An ancient ruler returns, and Alex is pulled into a war where the enemy can wear familiar faces. To lead the resistance, she must decide what truth, and what part of herself, she can still trust.
The Mystery Of Hollow Inn
by Tara Ellis
2014
Sam and Ally head to the mountains of Montana for summer break, only to find vandalism, ghost stories, and rumors of buried treasure at Hollow Inn. Helping family quickly turns into their first real mystery.
The Beach House Mystery
by Tara Ellis
2015
A quiet week at the beach turns strange when Sam and Ally meet suspicious neighbors and hear stories about a sea creature and a haunted lighthouse. A missing girl and a mysterious boat pull the whole group deeper in.
The Heiress of Covington Ranch
by Tara Ellis
2015
Middle school brings Sam and Ally a new friend and a new mystery. An abandoned ranch, a stolen ruby, and trouble surrounding one of their teachers all point to a family story that is not over yet.
The Secret of Camp Whispering Pines
by Tara Ellis
2015
Summer camp should mean hiking, swimming, and fun, but Sam and Ally find secrets instead. New friendships, hidden clues, and growing danger turn Camp Whispering Pines into a case they cannot ignore.
A Mysterious Christmas on Orcas Island
by Tara Ellis
2016
A holiday trip to Orcas Island comes wrapped in local legend and suspicious behavior. Ghost stories, shady adults, and a mysterious loner give Sam another case to untangle.
The Case of the Curious Canine
by Tara Ellis
2016
Volunteering at an animal shelter sounds perfect to Sam, until dogs start arriving with odd symptoms and the adults seem far too calm about it. Solving this case means choosing between a mystery and her heart.
The Haunting of Eagle Creek Middle School
by Tara Ellis
2016
While planning a Halloween fundraiser, Sam, Ally, and Cassy stumble into a ghost story tied to their own school. The deeper they dig, the more they uncover secrets that could change lives in the present.
The Legend of Shadow Mountain
by Tara Ellis
2017
An unexpected trip to Alaska turns dangerous when Sam and her friends are caught in a plane crash. To survive, they must cross unforgiving wilderness, face a local legend, and reach help before time runs out.
The Mystery of Old Gully Trail
by Tara Ellis
2018
When Sam and Ally meet a troubled girl, they are drawn into a family secret tied to the origins of their town. The trail into the woods leads them straight into buried history.
Fallout
by Tara Ellis
2019
Mercy is filling with survivors, and safety is getting harder to defend. Outside town, the road is still brutal, and a more sinister threat is drawing closer.
Flashpoint
by Tara Ellis
2019
A gamma-ray burst wipes out huge parts of the population in an instant. The survivors who can still move head for the town of Mercy, hoping it can shelter them from what comes next.
Return to Hollow Inn
by Tara Ellis
2019
Back at Hollow Inn, Sam and Ally are pulled into a new mystery when a young guest goes missing. Familiar ground feels different this time, and even family brings complications.
Smolder
by Tara Ellis
2019
Governments are breaking down, medical care is vanishing, and the wounded keep coming. While one group struggles toward Mercy, others fight to hold on through the slow burn of collapse.
The Secret of Sanctuary
by Tara Ellis
2019
A visit to Sanctuary brings Sam into contact with new allies and old secrets. What starts as another local puzzle grows into a deeper mystery with consequences beyond one town.
Convergence
by Tara Ellis
2020
Mercy has become a beacon for survivors, and that makes it a target. As rival forces close in, the scattered storylines of the series begin crashing together.
Decay
by Tara Ellis
2020
Mercy is more vulnerable than ever as storms, fear, and violence keep building. The safe haven everyone has been chasing may not stay safe much longer.
Mercy
by Tara Ellis
2020
Everything built toward Mercy comes due here. The town's last stand will decide whether hope can outlast the people determined to crush it.
Brink of Extinction
by Tara Ellis
2021
Humanity is pushed closer to the edge with every aftershock and outbreak. The people still fighting for answers must move faster, and trust more carefully, than ever before.
Escaping Extinction
by Tara Ellis
2021
The jungle hides secrets, and not all allies stay allies. As the countdown toward disaster keeps ticking, the path to survival grows narrower and more dangerous.
Layers of Extinction
by Tara Ellis
2021
The crisis deepens as the global disasters keep unfolding. Survivors begin to see the hidden pattern behind the chaos, but every new answer comes with fresh danger.
Point of Extinction
by Tara Ellis
2021
An underwater explosion, a spreading illness, and massive earthquakes look unrelated, until they don't. As the world tips toward extinction, scattered survivors race to understand what is really happening.
Spread of Extinction
by Tara Ellis
2021
The true reach of the catastrophe is finally becoming clear. With the world unraveling on every side, survivors gamble on a desperate plan to stop total collapse.
Surviving Extinction
by Tara Ellis
2021
All roads lead to a final reckoning. As the last forces collide, the survivors must decide what saving humanity is really going to cost.
After the Crash
by Tara Ellis
2022
A new nationwide city-planning program goes live, and the result is apocalyptic. As technology fails and millions die, one of the few towns left standing must decide who to trust and how to survive.
Critical Failure
by Tara Ellis
2022
Redemption's future hangs on failing systems and dangerous truths. With enemies closing in and loyalties under strain, survival depends on what the town is willing to risk.
Entangled
by Tara Ellis
2022
War finally reaches Redemption. Old lies, outside threats, and tangled loyalties force the survivors into a fight that is bigger and messier than they expected.
Road to Redemption
by Tara Ellis
2022
The war for Redemption is no longer distant, it is here. With everything finally converging, the survivors have one last chance to decide what their town stands for.
The Collapse
by Tara Ellis
2022
Redemption survived the initial crash, but the outside world is closing in fast. Natural threats, desperate survivors, and mounting secrets push the town toward choices that could break it from within.
The Mystery at Ocean Side
by Tara Ellis
2022
When a troubled boy moves in next door, strange things begin happening around Ocean Side. Sam follows the trail into riddles, family secrets, and a fight to save a local landmark.
Web of Destruction
by Tara Ellis
2022
Snow, fire, disease, and infighting tighten their grip on Redemption. As the town strains under pressure, the larger web behind the disaster grows harder to ignore.
The Case of the Missing Tree Star
by Tara Ellis
2023
What looks like a small missing-item case quickly grows into something more for Sam. As always, the real mystery is not the object itself, but the people and secrets around it.
The Fallen
by Tara Ellis
2023
Cass has spent years aboard a space station meant to help cure a plague-ravaged Earth. When the survivors are forced back to the surface, they carry hope, and become targets.
The Hunted
by Tara Ellis
2024
Cass and the others were supposed to save what was left of humanity. Instead, once they reach Earth, they become prey in a broken world that wants what they carry.
Critical Mass
by Tara Ellis
2025
Humanity's last hope hangs on what the survivors learn from Prometheus, and on whether they can act before the pathogen and the chaos close in for good. The finale aims straight at extinction-level stakes.
Existential Threat
by Tara Ellis
2025
The impacts were only the beginning. Dallas and Kyle join forces with other survivors to stop the Prometheus pathogen before human greed and panic finish what the sky started.
First Impact
by Tara Ellis
2025
Astronomer Kyle sees the threat coming, but warning the world is only the start. As the moons of Prometheus strike Earth and a deadly pathogen spreads, survivors across the globe are thrown into the fight of their lives.
The Redeemed
by Tara Ellis
2025
Cass reaches the Colorado refuge she once imagined as safe, only to find a new nightmare waiting there. To stop her father's mission, she and her found family must rethink what redemption really means.
Outpost 10
by Tara Ellis
2026
A remote outpost should mean safety, but isolation has its own dangers. Tara Ellis turns the closed setting into a tense survival story where trust matters as much as supplies.
Where should I start?
If you want big, fast apocalypse: Flashpoint → Smolder → Fallout
If you like disaster science and global stakes: Point of Extinction → Layers of Extinction → Brink of Extinction
If you want her newer end-of-the-world series: First Impact → Existential Threat → Critical Mass
If you prefer young adult sci-fi with secrets: Infected → Heritage → Descent
If you want a clean mystery first: The Mystery Of Hollow Inn → The Secret of Camp Whispering Pines → The Beach House Mystery
Author bio
Tara Ellis writes fast-moving stories with a strong sense of danger, but what really stands out is how much she cares about the people inside the chaos. Across post-apocalyptic thrillers, young adult science fiction, and middle-grade mysteries, her books tend to mix survival pressure with curiosity, hidden connections, and characters who have to think their way through trouble, not just run from it.
She has said she grew up in Yakima, Washington, and she grew up on sci-fi too. That early love for big what-if ideas still shows in her work. Meteor showers, ancient secrets, collapsing systems, isolated towns, mysterious illnesses, and uneasy survivors all feel right at home in her fiction, but they are usually grounded by family ties, practical details, and a real interest in how people behave when fear takes over.
Before writing became her full-time job, Ellis spent years in emergency and public-service work. She is a certified firefighter in Washington State and volunteered as a firefighter and EMT for more than eight years. She also worked as an emergency room technician, served as a 911 dispatcher, acted as a support officer, and taught life-saving skills to both the public and first responders.
You can feel that background on the page.
Her disaster novels do not just focus on spectacle. They pay attention to procedures, injuries, shortages, stress, and the split-second choices people make when there is no good option. That helps books like Flashpoint, After the Crash, Point of Extinction, The Fallen, and First Impact feel tense in a very physical way. Even when the premise is huge, a gamma-ray burst, a global outbreak, an asteroid event, the stories stay close to the people trying to get through the next hour.
Ellis also has a lighter, more old-school mystery side. In the Samantha Wolf Mysteries, beginning with The Mystery Of Hollow Inn, she writes clean adventures for younger readers that nod to the feel of Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden. Sam, Ally, and their friends solve puzzles in inns, camps, schools, ranches, islands, and small coastal towns, with friendship and family carrying as much weight as the clues.
Her young adult science fiction pushes in yet another direction. Infected, Heritage, and Descent blend outbreak suspense, conspiracy-tinged mystery, and ancient-history questions into one long chase. Readers who stick with Ellis from series to series usually seem to be there for the same reason, she likes momentum, but she also likes secrets, and she is good at building stories where each answer opens the door to a bigger problem.
She writes a lot.
That range extends beyond the Tara Ellis name. Under Tara Meyers, she has also published women's fiction and mystery novels, which makes sense when you look at how comfortably she moves between age groups and subgenres. These days she lives in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State, and when she is not writing or spending time with family, she has said she is often out hiking the woods and plotting whatever trouble is coming next for her characters.
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