Sarah Moore Fitzgerald Books in Order

Sarah Moore Fitzgerald was born in New York in 1965 and grew up in County Dublin. Her life and work have been shaped by Ireland, even though her early years began across the Atlantic. As a child, she was drawn to stories, and she has recalled the impact of teachers who brought literature alive with their own excitement.

Before readers knew her as a novelist, Fitzgerald made a career in higher education. She graduated from University College Dublin, joined the University of Limerick in 1989, and spent years working on teaching, learning, academic development, psychology, and organisational behaviour. Along the way, she wrote nonfiction books and articles for students, academics, and teachers.

Fiction was never far away. Fitzgerald has said she wrote throughout her life, but a busy university job and family life meant writing novels in late-night hours or on holidays. It was a slow, persistent path toward the ambition she had carried for years, becoming a published novelist.

She kept going.

Her first young readers' novel, Back to Blackbrick, appeared in 2013. It follows Cosmo, who is trying to hold onto his grandfather as illness takes hold of his memory, then finds a way into his grandfather's past. It set a pattern for the books that followed, real family pressures, a touch of the strange, and young people trying to make sense of what adults cannot or will not explain.

The following year's The Apple Tart of Hope brought a missing-boy mystery to a small community. Meg and Stevie refuse to stop looking for Oscar Dunleavy, and the story weighs friendship, guilt, bullying, hope, and the damage caused by getting someone else's story wrong. Readers who pick up Fitzgerald's books often meet characters facing big feelings without being talked down to.

She doesn't look away from grief.

That approach runs through A Very Good Chance, where Minty finds an escape in the odd world of Nettlebog and an unexpected connection with the quiet Ned Buckley, and The List of Real Things, about sisters Grace and Bee, loss, and the uneasy line between imagination and fact. Her stories are often grounded in Irish places and everyday school or family life, but they leave enough room for mystery, memory, food, horses, or a place that might not be entirely real.

Later books widen the questions. A Strange Kind of Brave follows Luca and Allie as they face fear and intimidation in a small town. All the Money in the World asks what happens when a teenager who has grown up poor is suddenly handed the means to reinvent herself. In The Shark and the Scar, Jay's recovery from a traumatic accident leads him to question the story his father has told him.

Fitzgerald's work for young readers has been shortlisted for awards, adapted for the stage, and translated into many languages. She is now based in County Clare and is part of the creative-writing team at the University of Limerick, where she also directs its Creative Writing Winter School. Teaching, reading, and writing still sit alongside one another in her working life.