Martina Cole books

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Maura Ryan Reading Order

Non-Fiction

Standalone Novels

Martina Cole was born in Essex in 1959 to Irish parents. She was expelled from convent school at fifteen, married at sixteen, divorced by seventeen, and became a single mother at eighteen. She worked as a cleaner, waitress, and shelf-stacker while writing, and her debut novel Dangerous Lady sat in a drawer for a decade before she submitted it. It sold for a record advance and became a bestseller in 1992.

Since then she has published twenty-nine books and sold over sixteen million copies, making her Britain’s bestselling female crime writer. Her novels deal with London’s criminal underworld, organized crime families, and the women who survive within those worlds. She won the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2021 for lifetime achievement, and The Take won the British Book Award for Crime Thriller of the Year in 2006. Several of her books have been adapted for television, including The Take starring Tom Hardy.