Martina Cole

"I really wanted to become an ambassador for The Reading Agency because reading is such a big part of my life. The wonderful thing about the Six Book Challenge is that people who don't normally read, or who think that reading isn't their bag, are encouraged to pick up a book. When you read a book you have to picture it all in your own mind. No one tells you what you're seeing or what you should be feeling. That's the secret of reading - it's such a personal thing."
Watch Martina talk about about her favourite books, how she encourages non-readers to pick up a book and why she's become our Six Book Challenge Ambassador.
Martina Cole is the acknowledged queen of crime drama. Her most recent novel, The Life, was a No. 1 bestseller in hardback and paperback and is one in a long line of similarly successful novels. Several of Martina's novels have been adapted for the screen, most recently The Take and The Runaway which were shown on Sky One to remarkable reviews. In addition, Two Women and The Graft have been adapted for the stage; both were highly acclaimed when performed at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, which also staged Dangerous Lady in 2012, celebrating 20 years since Martina's debut novel was published.
Martina continues to smash sales records with each of her books, which have sold in excess of 11 million copies in total. In 2011 Martina surpassed the £50 million sales mark since records began and was the first British female novelist for adult audiences to achieve this. October 2013 sees the publication of Revenge, her 20th novel.