Best-selling author, literacy ambassador, mother and wife, Adele Parks makes quite a story. Maxine Gordon hears all about our home-grown chick-lit heroine.

ADELE PARKS’ literary seeds were sown 30 years ago when she would spend hours making up stories for her sister. At the family home in Yarm, Adele and big sister Andrae would devour Enid Blyton’s boarding-school stories.

“We would read Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers and when we had finished the book, I would make up a story about what happened next, or take a character and say what happened to them,” says Adele, 40, who lives in Surrey, but still has her soft Teesside accent.

Becoming a novelist had always been her dream. After graduating from university, Adele spent a year teaching English in Italy before enjoying a successful career in advertising, which included setting up an agency in Botswana, where she lived for two years.

On her return to London, she wrote in her spare time and her first novel, Playing Away, became the debut bestseller of the millennium.

Her second novel, Game Over, was set in Whitby and also sold shelfloads, while subsequent books – Larger Than Life, The Other Woman’s Shoes, Still Thinking Of You, Husbands and Young Wives’ Tales – have each sold more than a million copies in the UK.

Her latest novel, Tell Me Something, is an equal success. Set in Italy, it tells the story of Elizabeth, who is struggling to realise her dreams. All she ever wanted was to marry a handsome Italian and have lots of babies.

“We meet her six years down the line,”

explains Adele. “She has met her dream man but is struggling with the fact her life isn’t following her wish list. She’s got her Italian husband, but wanted lots of babies and finds she can’t fall pregnant. She is struggling with culture shock and her in-laws, while a significant ex is posing a threat to her relationship.”

Although Adele’s novels cover a breadth of topics, from adultery and divorce to reality TV, one of the constant themes is the notion of ‘what if?’ “I like to turn history on its head and ask: ‘If I hadn’t made that choice, what would have happened?’,” says Adele. “Women today face lots of choices but, unlike men, don’t have thousands of years of history in how to deal with these choices. Women have to decide whether to stay at home, or work and still have children or work and don’t have children – and then deal with those choices. It’s very complex.”

Adele reveals she had her own “what-if?” moment. “When I was 16, my boyfriend proposed to me. We were on the A1 at the time and he said: ‘Let’s go to Scotland and get married’.

I knew I wanted to go to university, but I’ve always had that ‘what if I’d had that young, romantic marriage?’”

Adele has no regrets about her choice. She’s happily married with an eight-year-old son, Conrad, and is a hugely successful popular author.

Her books have been published in more than 20 countries and two have been optioned as movies. She is already working on her ninth novel and a screenplay.

Adele is not offended by being categorised as a chick-lit author, although she prefers to call her work “contemporary women’s fiction”.

Among her biggest fans are her family back in Yarm – mum Maureen, dad Tony, and sister Andrae. Adele says she was heartened to hear that her parents skip the more racy parts of her books.

“My books are quite sexy and there’s quite a lot of rude stuff in there,” says Adele. “If I begin to imagine Mum and Dad reading it, I would be mortified. But they tell me they skim read those bits!”

Adele still visits Yarm regularly, and enjoys days out in York with Conrad.

“He loves the Castle Museum and Jorvik,” she says. Day trips to York and Whitby were a regular feature of her childhood.

Such was the lure of Whitby that Adele based her second novel, Game Over, in the coastal town. “The main character was a hard-as-nails TV producer who meets a fantastic bloke from Whitby. She goes to Whitby and it changes her perception of life because it puts her in such a different environment.”

Ultimately, Adele wants to encourage as many people as possible to discover the pleasures of reading. “Although we encourage our kids to read, women and men often neglect their own reading time,” she says. “Everybody needs escapism and, for me, that’s what books have always done. If I can give that gift to one other person, then that’s fantastic.

Reading a book is a marvellous thing.”