BESTSELLING AUTHOR SOPHIE Kinsella has died at the age of 55.

Kinsella was the author of the Shopaholic series, with her 2000 novel The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic being adapted into film Confessions of a Shopaholic in 2009, starring Isla Fisher.

Kinsella’s family announced the news on the writer’s Instagram page.

“We are heartbroken to announce the passing this morning of our beloved Sophie (aka Maddy, aka Mummy). She died peacefully with her final days filled with her true loves: family and music and warmth and Christmas and joy.”

In 2024, Kinsella revealed that she had been diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, at the end of 2022.

The post continued to say that despite her illness, Kinsella counted herself as “truly blessed” and took nothing for granted.

Kinsella, whose real name is Madeline Wickham, had three children with her husband Henry Wickham, whom she married in 1991.

Her first novel The Tennis Party was published in 1995 while she was working as a financial journalist, later pivoting to writing fiction full-time. Most recently, she published What Does It Feel Like? in 2024, a novel about a writer who learns she has a tumour growing in her brain and wrestles with living and her diagnosis.

Kinsella said the novel was fiction, “but is my most autobiographical work to date”.