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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br />
