Margaret J. McMaster published her first book of middle-grade fiction, Carried Away on Licorice Days, in 2008. It was nominated for three literary awards: the Canadian Library Association's Book of the Year for Children Award, the 2010/2011 Hackmatack Children's Choice Book Award, and the 2011 Rocky Mountain Book Award. In 2009 she started writing the Babysitter Out of Control! series. These amusing, fast-paced adventures include: Babysitter Out of Control!, Looking for Love on Mongo Tongo, The Improbable Party on Purple Plum Lane, What Happened in July (a Best Books for Kids & Teens selection), The Sinking of the Wiley Bean, and, The Queen of Second Chances. The Complete Babysitter Out of Control! Series, published in 2015, was long-listed for the 2016 Silver Birch Award, a Best Books for Kids & Teens selection, and the 2015 Moonbeam Children's Book Award Early Reader/1st Chapter Books winner. McMaster is a past contributor to the Canadian Children's Annual and her creative non-fiction piece, After All These Years, was shortlisted for the 2006 CBC Literary Award. So Much Potential, a novel set in the Lake Erie fishing industry, was published in 2013. It was a Best Book for Kids & Teens *Starred* Selection. The first book in her Phoebe Sproule series, 8 Days in DUMBO, was named one of *The Year's Best* by Resource Links and won an Honorable Mention in the 2019/2020 Reader Views Literary Awards. The sequel, The Haunting of Cedar Hill Plantation, was released in 2020 and won a Bronze Medal in the Reader Views Literary Awards. In 2022 she published a collection of adult short fiction called, The Exact Likeness of Living Persons, which won a Silver Medal in the 2022/2023 Reader Views Literary Awards.
