A best-selling author who learned to read and write aged 39 while working as a cleaner has written 30 books and sold more than 100,000 copies.

Karen Woods, now 54, would regularly skip school and left aged 15 when she became pregnant. It wasn't until she was offered a promotion which required her to write emails she decided to take an adult literacy course.

Brave Karen passed - and is now a best-selling crime author signed to HarperNorth, a branch of Harper Collins, and has even written sold-out theatre shows. The author, dubbed the “Manchester’s Queen of Crime”, credits reading and writing with changing her life and says a TV deal may be in the works.