Ali Standish Books In Order

Publication Order of Baskerville Hall Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Chapter Books

Ali Standish is an award-winning novelist best known for her children’s fiction novels. The author was born in a small North Carolina town near Greensboro, where she grew up playing in the many creeks, ponds, and woods.
While she was in the fifth grade, she read two novels that changed her life which were “Bridge to Terabithia” by Katherine Paterson and “The Chronicles of Narnia” by C.S. Lewis.

Finding inspiration from these stories, she used to call her home backyard “Narbithia,” and often pretended that she ruled over it as a benevolent queen.

Standish usually penned accounts of her royal adventures in a notebook she usually kept in a tree’s hollow. She still believes that all the writing she used to do is the reason that she is the storyteller that she is today.
She has won many awards for her novels, including Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, ALA Booklist, and Kirkus Reviews starred reviews.

She now makes her home with her son and husband in North Carolina.

For her undergraduate degree, Ali Standish went to Pomona College where she got her bachelor of arts degree in English.

She would then proceed to work as a program administrator and teacher in the Public School system in the United States for four years.

It was while she was doing her undergrad at Pomona that she did a children’s literature course and was hooked on the genre.

She had always loved creative writing growing up, but taking that class reinvigorated her passion for children’s literature and got her thinking that she could make a career of it.
But it was during this time that she had been engaged in a contract to work with “Teach for America” for a full year.

Her first year teaching the program proved brutal and she promised herself that if she got through it, she would apply to the Hollins MFA program.

She intended to do the MFA during the summer when she was not teaching and then do some creative writing work during her leisure time. She made it through her first year and in her second year of teaching she began the MFA program.

However, it was not until she was living in a tumbledown Victorian house in England several years later that she began writing her debut novel “The Ethan I Was Before” in 2017.
These days, she makes her home in North Carolina where she is a full-time reader, part-time editor, and part-time writer.

She lives with her beautiful music-playing husband, a wild toddler whom she refers to as the boss, and a nutty dog with a canny ability to lick her own eyeball.

When she is not writing her novels or reading, she loves to take walks with her dog since she is lucky to live in a little but very picturesque village in the country.
She also loves traveling as much as possible, trying new recipes, and riding horses whenever she can.

Ali Standish’s novel “The Ethan I Was Before” tells the story of a young boy named Ethan. The first time she ran away, he was caught very early and the same thing happened the second time too.

It was his brother who caught him the third time out before they moved to Palm Knot, Georgia, to go to a strange new school full of strangers and live with an estranged grandfather.

His every waking moment is dogged by tragedy and he is also haunted by a tragedy that happened to Kacey his friend one snowy night a few years back.

When he becomes acquainted with Coralee, he is not looking for friendship but his new acquaintance seems like just the person he needs to acclimate to his new home. Nonetheless, everything is surrounded by mystery in the new settings.
The entire novel is a subtle exploration of how to redefine the self following personal tragedy. At the heart of it, it is not about what happened to Ethan but rather, who was Ethan and will we ever get him back?

“Yonder” by Ali Standish asserts the truism that not every story has a hero, even if every hero has a story.

The lead in the novel is Danny who lives in a small idyllic town in Appalachia during the 1940s. He is well aware that his story comes with two heroes: there is his protector and friend Jack and his father who is abroad fighting in the World War.
Danny has always looked up to Jack ever since his father left and his admiration only goes a notch higher when he rescues two kids from drowning after a flood.

He often relies on the older boy for guidance, which is something he needs more given that his dad is not there to guide him. As such, when Jack disappears from their hometown, Danny goes all out to find him.

The only clue he has to go on is “Yonder,” which he scrawled on some paper he left behind. The word could be in reference to a magical mysterious town Jack once spoke of, where rainbow birds in huge flocks fly across the skies and where war is unheard of.
Other leads point to a darker and more mundane direction in which their hometown is much less idyllic and he does not know his friend as much as he thought he did.

Ali Standish’s “August Isle” is a riveting work of fiction that tells the story of Miranda. For many years, she has been staring at postcards of “August Isle,” which is where he mother used to spend most of her holidays when she was growing up.
She longs to visit the town but not in the way she finds herself doing it. Upon arriving on the Isle, to spend time with Aunt Clare her mother’s best friend, she is uncertain and feels very alone.

But she finds the town more beautiful and idyllic than what she had in the postcards and soon makes friends with Aunt Clare’s daughter Sammy.

But there is more to the island than its sandy beaches and bright streets and she soon finds herself tangled in some bizarre mysteries.

A haunted lighthouse is emitting some strange noises, a name reaches out from the dark past of her mother while it seems an old seafarer also has some secrets.

Closing in on answers, Miranda has to confront the biggest question of all, and she might not be brave enough to deal with the truth that might come out.