Cynthia Ellingsen

Cynthia Ellingsen writes contemporary women’s fiction organized around friendship, family inheritance, and the histories attached to places. The Winemaker’s Secret is the second Starlight Cove novel, published by Lake Union in 2019 after The Lighthouse Keeper. It follows Abby Harrington as she returns to the coastal community and becomes involved with a family vineyard whose future is bound to old decisions and guarded information. The setting lets Ellingsen connect romantic possibility with questions of ownership, belonging, and what one generation leaves unresolved for the next. Her wider bibliography includes The Whole Package, Marriage Matters, When We Were Sisters, and several books for younger readers. She has published with Lake Union, Grand Central, Penguin, Bookouture, and Albert Whitman. The Winemaker’s Secret illustrates her preference for interwoven community relationships: the vineyard provides more than atmosphere, becoming the practical and emotional ground on which Abby must decide which family stories to preserve and which to reconsider.