Elaine Marie Alphin (née Bonilla; October 30, 1955 – August 19, 2014) was an American author of more than thirty books for children and young adults.
[1] Although she specialized in fiction, she has published many non-fiction titles, including biographies of Davy Crockett, Louis Pasteur, Dwight Eisenhower, and John Paul Jones, which she co-wrote with her husband Arthur Alphin (as part of Lerner Publishing's History Maker Biographies series).
Several of her novels dealt with controversial topics such as serial killers, pedophiles, child abuse, homosexuality, murder, and suicide.
[3] Alphin was a subject of the Contemporary Authors series, a collection of biographies published by Thomson Gale in 2007.
The book's popularity with young readers prompted her publishers to ask for a companion novel – Ghost Soldier.