Donnelly returned to New York at age 25, moving to
Brooklyn. Her first book was published by Atheneum in 2002:
Humble Pie, a
picture book with the veteran illustrator
Stephen Gammell. That year she also published her first novel.
The Tea Rose (Thomas Dunne, 2002) is the first book of a trilogy set in the
East End of London late in the 19th century, with ties to the story of
Jack the Ripper. The second book,
The Winter Rose, continues the tale, following the Finnegan family and related characters from London to Africa to the coast of Northern California. The third novel in the series,
The Wild Rose, which explores Willa and Seamie's story, follows the characters from London on the verge of World War I to Arabia in 1918. Her second novel,
A Northern Light, is based on the
murder of Grace Brown by
Chester Gillette in the
Adirondack Mountains in 1906 - which had been the basis for
Theodore Dreiser's epic
An American Tragedy and its adaptation, the 1951 film
A Place in the Sun. In 2004,
A Northern Light won the
Carnegie Medal for children's and young-adult books published in Britain School Library Journal, Amazon.com, BN.com, ALA-YALSA, among others. The audiobook edition from Listening Library, read by Emily Janice Card and Emma Bering, was a runner-up for the ALA's annual Odyssey Award. Donnelly was "captivated and amazed" by the rendition of what she calls "the hardest book I've written". The song "Open Your Eyes", released by
Hollywood Records and sung by
Bea Miller, was drawn from the chant sung by the river witches in
Deep Blue. Donnelly worked with Disney again in 2017, when she published
Beauty and the Beast: Lost in a Book, an original story to accompany the
Beauty and the Beast film. Lost in a Book expands on the film, exploring the friendship between Belle and the Beast as well as Belle's time within the pages of Nevermore, a magical book from which she narrowly escapes. Lost in a Book spent four months on the New York Times bestseller list, and rights have been sold in 11 countries. Donnelly returned to historical fiction with
Fatal Throne, a book about Henry VIII and his six wives published by
Random House/Schwartz & Wade in May 2018. For this project, Donnelly joined six other authors (
Candace Fleming,
M.T. Anderson,
Stephanie Hemphill,
Deborah Hopkinson,
Linda Sue Park, and
Lisa Ann Sandell), each of whom wrote the part of Henry or one of his wives. Donnelly wrote
Anne of Cleves, Henry's fourth wife. In September 2017, Donnelly announced a new multi-book project with
Scholastic Publishing beginning with 2019's
Stepsister. The story begins where the classic tale of
Cinderella leaves off and follows her wicked stepsister Isabelle as "personifications of fate and chance battle for control of her life, hinting that there may be hope after all for a girl labeled
ugly since her first appearances in literature". "Stepsister" was followed in 2020 by
Poisoned, a retelling of the Snow White fairy tale. Donnelly has said a third fairy tale retelling is in the works and will be published in early 2024, but details are not yet available. Motion Picture rights for
Stepsister and
Poisoned have been acquired by Endeavor Content. In 2023, she published ''Molly's Letter
, the first in a series of novella-length stories called Rose Petals
set in the world of her three-volume Tea Rose'' series. ==Awards and nominations==