Sarah Bird Books In Order

Publication Order of Sarah Bird's Texas Quartet Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Author Sarah Bird moved all over the world while growing up with her Air Force family, and currently resides in in Austin, Texas.

Sarah was voted as the Best Austin Author for the fourth time in the year 2012 by the readers of the Austin Chronicle. She was picked for a People Magazines Pager Turners, a New York Public Library’s 25 Books to Remember and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great Writers series.

She writes literary fiction and historical fiction. Her debut novel, “Alamo House” was released in the year 1986.

Her essays and articles have appeared in places like Oprahs Magazine, Texas Monthly, Real Simple, Glamour, Ladies Home Journal, Salon, and Seventeen, as well as other publications.

“Alamo House” is the first novel in the “Centex Quartet”, which was released in the year 1986. The sorority sisters of Alamo House at the University of Texas might be at comic odds with one another, but they still have one thing in common: They each hate the frat rats across the street, the Sigma Upsilon Kappas, or the SUKs.

With all of the college turmoil, Alamo House is the scene of an endearing and extraordinary friendship among Mary Jo (who is confused about both love and life, but is determined to get them both right), Fayrene (free after escaping from Baptist Waco), and Collie (self-proclaimed guide to the worlds’ ways and party girl). Together, they go off on a roller coaster ride of escapades that alters them all. It also galvanizes Alamo House into an all-out counterattack against the SUKs.

“The Boyfriend School” is the second in the “Centex Quartet”, which was released in the year 1989. Gretchen Griner is an under appreciated and underpaid photographer for the Austin Grackle and huge consumer of Cup O’ Soup. She is also the part time lover of Trout, or Peter Overton Treadwell III. Until she meets Lizzie Potts, also known by the handle of Viveca Lamoureaux, who is a romance writer.

Lizzie has plans for Gretchen’s life, and it includes Lizzie’s brother Gus. Gretchen has her own plan, though, and it does not feature some ‘wispy goon’ named Gus. Fate has a plan, too, for Gretchen, and it cares not for what Gretchen wants. Lizzie will give Gretchen Gus, Gus is going to give Gretchen the guy of her dreams. Among this oddball group of marvelous misfits, somebody might discover the secret to true romance.

“The Mommy Club” is the third in the “Centex Quartet”, which was released in the year 1991. Trudy Herring, age thirty-eight, is a dreamer, a permanent temporary work at San Antonio Museum of Folk Art, and a sculptor of clay figures. That all changes when she agrees to incubate a child for Hillary Goettler (her boss) and Hillary’s husband.

Trudy moves into their mansion and gets instantly pulled into their world that she has never known before this. While Hillary opines parenthood to just be a “time-management problem”, Trudy is forced to consume some healthy meals inside a home where the décor changes constantly.

While her body continues to warm to the other life inside, Trudy starts to long for her former flame, Sinclair Coker, who is very enthusiastic for the carnal and works as a freelance mystic. Her quest to satisfy her cravings makes Trudy discover that it requires more than only war stories about things like childbirth and potty training for a woman to actually qualify for membership into ‘the mommy club’.

“The Yokota Officers Club” is a stand alone novel, which was released in the year 2001. Bernadette Root, a military brat, just returned ‘home’ after spending a year at college. For her, ‘home’ is Kadena Air Base in Okanawa, Japan so that she can spend the summer with her odd yet comforting clan. Ruled by a regimented and strict Air Force Major dad, but is grounded by their mom’s style of humor, Bernie’s family was just destined for military greatness during the glory days of the mid-fifties.

In Base life, where not keeping up on your lawn is cause for reassignment, one misstep is all it took to change the Roots’ world forever. The family’s choice to remain silent is unable to keep the wounds from the past from coming to light. Nor the memory of beloved Fumiko, the former maid of the family, whose name has become verboten. The secrets that were covered up long ago in classic military style, through both denial and elimination are now making their way to the surface for a return engagement.

“How Perfect is That” is a stand alone novel, which was released in the year 2008. Blythe Young, who is a wannabe Texas princess and a heroine just as driven, plucky, and desperate as Vanity Fair’s Becky Sharp, is plummeting quickly from up- to downstairs, hitting her hand on each step of the Austin social ladder while she falls. Just about like the country as a whole, Blythe has surrendered to many dubious moral choices and faces the horrible consequences: public humiliation, a bit of a fondness for pharmaceuticals, bankruptcy, and no Pap smear for a decade. Worst of all, she has to move back to the fleabag co-op boarding house that she lived in as a student at the University of Texas.

Blythe really cares more about the ragged state of her nails, as well as how to get the ingredients for Code Warrior, Blythe’s blend of Red Bull, Stoli, and Ativan which keeps it all in focus. The whole time, her soul hangs in the balance. When she becomes in danger of losing the only friend that has been her true moral center is she ready to face her sins and start to make amends.

Her penance is merciless. She has to find some way to lure all of her old socialite friends into the tofu tenement that she has been recently reduced to. Little does she know that the ensuing collision between the pampered, Kir-sipping socialites and the tattooed, pierced, and dreadlocked inhabitants offers her only hope of finding some way out of her moral quagmire.