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Ann Elwood

Goodreads Author

Born

in Ridgewood, New Jersey, The United States

Twitter

aelwood

Genre

Biographies & Memoirs, Literature & Fiction, Mystery & Thrillers

Member Since

December 2010

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/goodreadscomaelwood

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I live in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California, with six cats, a desert tortoise, seven box turtles, and a German Shepherd, Louis, who looks something like Rin Tin Tin in his soulfulness. At night I can hear the ocean when the tides are high.

When I was nine, my family moved from Ridgewood to Saddle River, New Jersey, a paradise of a town with a woods, a skating pond, a fishing pond, and 700 people who knew who we all were and where we were every minute. I had a shepherd dog, Mac, who died a tragic death, shot because someone thought his foaming-at-the-mouth fear of a thunderstorm meant he had rabies.

As an adult, I had no dogs until I settled down. After college (two miserable years at Trenton State Teachers College and two happy ones at Fairleig I live in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California, with six cats, a desert tortoise, seven box turtles, and a German Shepherd, Louis, who looks something like Rin Tin Tin in his soulfulness. At night I can hear the ocean when the tides are high.

When I was nine, my family moved from Ridgewood to Saddle River, New Jersey, a paradise of a town with a woods, a skating pond, a fishing pond, and 700 people who knew who we all were and where we were every minute. I had a shepherd dog, Mac, who died a tragic death, shot because someone thought his foaming-at-the-mouth fear of a thunderstorm meant he had rabies.

As an adult, I had no dogs until I settled down. After college (two miserable years at Trenton State Teachers College and two happy ones at Fairleigh Dickinson College), I taught elementary school for a few miserable years, then moved to Camden, New Jersey and landed a job as a typist-clerk at the Philadelpha Bulletin. When my boss discovered I had difficulty typing up circulation figures with twelve carbons, I was fired and found another job writing copy for a paternalistic insurance company that offered a low salary and delicious free lunch. One of the printers had the magical ability to square up a stack of paper into a perfect cube.

Eventually I moved to a studio apartment on Irving Place in New York City, and, after a few months of writing copy for a textbook company, went on to free-lance as a writer of anything anyone would pay me for. In 1967, I moved to Los Angeles, where I was advertising manager for a publishing company. Then the west coast was a mecca for writers and adventurers. Within a couple of years, I visited a Malibu beach house, fell in love (long-distance) with Bob Dylan, met Thomas Pynchon (he wouldn’t remember it), and saw Hair. In 1972, I returned to free-lancing, moved south, and found my first dog, Puppy, a mixed breed who looked something like a fox. (To show you how inappropriate Puppy’s name became, I’ll tell you this: Puppy died at age 17.) I wrote articles for Irving Wallace and his son, David Wallichinsky (People’s Almanac and Book of Lists), and did other wonderful things I won’t mention here. With Carol Orsag Madigan, I wrote several books.

A desire to delve more deeply into ideas finally drove me to graduate school in 1981. My dissertation focused on an order of 17th and 18th century French nuns so I had to spend a happy year in France doing research. During that year, while not in the archives, I drank local wine with fellow historians and traveled the country with Puppy, who had far less trouble than I did communicating with the French.

Now, I teach history part-time at California State University, San Marcos, spend time with Louis and the other animals, and write the books I have always wanted to write but never had the time for.

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Combine Editions
Ann Elwood’s books

Average rating: 3.42 · 1,190 ratings · 163 reviews · 62 distinct works

	A Provençal Mystery (Mysteries in Provence Book 1) 3.30 avg rating — 860 ratings — published 2012 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Walking Out by Ann Elwood (Goodreads Author), John Raht 4.20 avg rating — 50 ratings — published 1979 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Rin-Tin-Tin:The Movie Star 3.23 avg rating — 62 ratings — published 2010 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Out of Stone 4.15 avg rating — 40 ratings — published 2015 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A viewer's guide to Cosmos, Carl Sagan 4.25 avg rating — 16 ratings — published 1980	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Lions (Zoobooks) by Ann Elwood (Goodreads Author), Jackie Estrada really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 1998 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Dog Park: A Collection of Stories with a Common Cast of Characters 3.64 avg rating — 14 ratings — published 2010 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Witches of Villeneuve (Mysteries in Provence Book 2) 3.58 avg rating — 12 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Chimpanzees and Bonobos (Zoo Books) 3.73 avg rating — 11 ratings — published 1991 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Old World Monkeys (Zoobooks Series) really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 1991 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Ann Elwood's Blog

Dogged by Dogs

Sometime I’m going to write a book about the history of dog breeds in the 20th century. The boxes of documents collected over a couple of years stand ready in the guest room closet — but I am not ready. So in lieu of that gigantic project, I’ve decided, for now, to write blog posts about the breeds that most interest me.

So here is the first one:

The Bloody Bloodhound’s Bad Rap

The model Read more of this blog post »

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Published on August 27, 2012 15:21

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Series by Ann Elwood

Zoobooks Series (61 books)
by

Ann Elwood (Goodreads Author)

3.98 avg rating — 1,124 ratings

Ann is Currently Reading

Ann Elwood is currently reading

Communards: The Story of the Paris Commune of 1871, As Told by Those Who Fought for It

by Mitchell Abidor

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Aug 27, 2022 08:09PM

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Voices of the Paris Commune (Revolutionary Pocketbooks)

by Mitchell Abidor

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Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune of 1871

by John M. Merriman

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Aug 21, 2022 12:58PM

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