Adele Parks

Adele Parks left advertising and management consultancy behind by handing an unsolicited manuscript to a literary agency on the eve of her thirtieth birthday. It became Playing Away, published in 2000, and more than twenty bestsellers have followed it. Lies, Lies, Lies, published in 2019, alternates between Daisy and Simon, a couple whose marriage is quietly wrecked by his drinking and by what a fertility clinic reveals about their daughter's parentage; it was shortlisted for Fiction Book of the Year at the 2020 British Book Awards. One Last Secret, from 2022, puts a woman paid to pose as a rich client's girlfriend inside a château in southern France, where another guest turns out to know precisely who she is. Parks is from Teesside and read English at Leicester. She was appointed MBE in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to literature, has judged the Costa Book Awards, and is a patron of the National Literacy Trust.