ADELE PARKS
The prolific bestselling novelist shares her top five reads with Judith Spelman
by Gina Ford
Adele Parks has worked in advertising and as a management consultant. Her first book, Play Away, was published in 2000 and she has published 18 novels in 18 years which have all been on the bestseller lists. Adele is passionate about reading and is an ambassador for the National Literacy Trust and on the Reading Agency’s Six Book Challenge team. Her 19th book, Lies Lies Lies, is published this month by HarperCollins.
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
by Harper Lee
‘I loved it because it is told from a child’s point of view. I read it when I was about thirteen, not a child, not a woman. An ideal age to appreciate the gentle humour and irony of Scott’s unselfconscious observations focused on adult hypocrisy. Set in a sleepy town in South Alabama during the Great Depression in the 1930s, To Kill A Mocking Bird is a multi-layered story that tackles some of the biggest issues we are still struggling with today, racism and religious sanctimony. I remember this not just as a rites of passage book with low-key sex and violence but one of the first books that I read which had a non-literal title. I remember caring so very, very much about what happened to everyone. I realised I actually cared more than I cared about some things that were happening in my real world. I thought I was odd but in quite a delightful way.’