Where on earth do I begin with Danielle Steel’s novels?

It’s a cold, rainy day and I’m wondering what to do with my time when a friend says, “why don’t you curl up with a Danielle Steel novel?” Are they joking? It’s not because I’m a literary snob; it’s just there are over 200 to choose from – where exactly do I begin?

Steel, 75, is the world’s bestselling living author and has sold almost a billion books. Since 2015 alone, her books have spent a total of 181 weeks in the Sunday Times top 10.

The US author is known for her fierce work ethic. She apparently works a daily 20-to-22-hour shift, starting at 8.30am, and types on a bulky 1946 Olympia standard typewriter she affectionately calls “Olly”, and she’s super productive, publishing six or seven novels a year – her latest The High Notes, is out next week.

While her books have often been dismissed by critics as “formulaic”, nobody can ever deny their popularity. She’s in the Guinness Book of Records for having at least one book on the New York Times bestseller list for 390 consecutive weeks.

She allows a full week off every summer in the south of France to be with her family – she has five ex-husbands and nine adult children (two adopted). But the rest of the time it’s type, type, type. Her children even recall falling asleep to the sound down the hallway at night. “I don’t get to bed until I’m so tired I could sleep on the floor,” she told Glamour magazine in the past. “If I have four hours, it’s really a good night for me.”

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While many of us might have heard of Danielle Steel, how many of us really know who she is and what her books are like? Since her first novel Going Home, in 1973, Steel’s books have been shelved as airport novels. I’d often spotted her novels in people’s bathrooms, or in hotels with worn covers and cliched titles: Secrets, Betrayal, and The Affair. I assumed they were all about wealthy people having sex – but I’d never got further than the back cover. To dare to read one felt like a guilty pleasure.

I soon became intrigued and I’ve been trying to get an interview for years – but she rarely does them. What spell does she cast on her readers? How can one person write so many bestsellers? I decided to read one of her latest books. But which one? Steel writes historical fiction, contemporary fiction, and thrillers. There is plenty of romance, and when she does write about sex, she hopes it’s “tastefully handled”.

At home I have a tall stack of her newest titles for 2022. Invisible, which was published in January, sounds romantic: it is about a young woman thrust into the spotlight by a British film director who wants to make her a star – will she be able to stay true to herself while pursuing her dreams?

The High Stakes, which came out in March, follows a group of career women at a boutique talent and literary agency in New York who discover the high price of success, while April’s release, Beautiful, is about a 22-year-old supermodel whose life is blown apart seconds after a terrorist attack. With her famous face changed forever, she has to redefine the meaning of beauty.

Meanwhile, The Challenge, published in August, is about a rescue operation to save a group of teenagers lost on a mountain in Montana – and their parents’ desperation to find them. Or, there’s The High Notes, out this month, about a young woman with the voice of an angel who fights for the freedom to follow her dreams.

Or should I just wait for The Whittiers, out in November, about a wealthy family whose privileged adult kids grew up in a grand mansion in the centre of Manhattan but must now rally around to support each other after an avalanche tragedy on a skiing trip in Europe.

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In the end, I reach for Steel’s Suspects, published in July, about a CIA agent covertly helping the wealthy founder of an online shopping empire called Theo, whose husband and son are kidnapped.

The book, with its banner, “Wealth. Fear. Revenge. Love” seems like a real page-turner. How fast am I hooked – if at all?

Within 15 minutes I’m speeding through the book, I can see the appeal. It’s an easy read and an escape into the lives of the uber-rich, people such as Theo, who could have afforded to pay the €100m ransom to amateur Russian kidnappers but doesn’t on the advice of the police. But there are “heart-breaking results” – her husband and son are killed.

It’s also jam-packed full of mundane and juicy details, from what is laid out in a VIP airport lounge to the fact the handsome chameleon power broker among the super-rich – Pierre de Vaumont – has “somewhat fluid and difficult to discern sexual preferences”. The whole setup is intriguing and splashy, but it has a heart.

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Is the fact it’s mindless a bad thing? We switch off to binge-watch TV – so why not with books? My reading list surely doesn’t always have to be the new Maggie O’Farrell or Cormac McCarthy novel, does it? Could this be the way forward – just Steel, Marian Keyes, Jilly Cooper, and Jackie Collins, all day, every day? It’s a bit repetitive at times. Steel even goes back over facts so you don’t have to remember – or is it just bad editing?

What about Steel herself? How much of the author is in her own books? It isn’t until I read that for Theo in Suspects: “without her son, she had nothing left to live for. She dreaded the long years ahead without him”, that I felt a lump in my throat. Steel’s son, Nick Traina, ended his own life in 1997, at the age of 19, after battling bipolar disorder for much of his life. Steel wrote His Bright Lights in 1998 as a tribute to him – she has called it her most personally meaningful book.

But unlike Theo in the novel, whose enthusiasm for her work “wanes” after the tragedy, Steel’s passion for writing books did not. Instead, her unstoppable creative fire has perhaps only accelerated. It’s her safe refuge – her way of escaping too.

After a while of reading Suspects, the glamorous parties, never having to worry about the cost-of-living crisis and the VIP teams hovering outside the door, I get twitchy. I start to skim-read whole chapters, but it makes little difference and I can still follow the plot.

It’s then that I reach for Beautiful, about a supermodel who is forced to find beauty within. Will it be a little more profound? I feel like I’m being spoon-fed, it’s like being trapped in an episode of Dynasty. I no longer want to get lost in this world of money.

Steel rarely gives interviews, but look at her Instagram and you can see she likes connecting to the outside world – her readers, giving us a glimpse of her reality. This week, for example, she’s pictured with a new set of expensive-looking octagonal plates from her favourite table art store in Paris. There are also some family photos including an image of her youngest, Zara, as a baby: “She is a big Balenciaga streetwear fan”, writes Steel. Then there is a heartbreaking photo of her late son Nick, aged 4, as they climbed into bed together for a cuddle, posted on the recent anniversary of his death.

Steel might produce books as bountifully, but she became a writer by chance. She initially wanted to be a nun and then trained as a fashion designer.

Born in NYC in 1947 into a wealthy family – she was the only child of John Schulein-Steel, the heir of the German Löwenbräu beer family, and Norma da Câmara Stone dos Reis, daughter of a Portuguese diplomat, who divorced when Steel was eight years old – she grew up in France and the US. She is bilingual in French and English, and also speaks Spanish and Italian.

Writing was something she did for fun from the age of 15 – but it wasn’t until she worked at a New York City advertising agency, Supergirls, in 1968, that a client, encouraged her to turn her hand to writing a book.

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It wasn’t an easy path. She was turned down by her first agent, who told her to ditch writing. She needn’t have been heartbroken. Steel’s first novel, Going Home, was published in 1973. Several follow-up books got rejected, but after The Promise in 1978, she has never looked back.

“It was a long hard road, and the early days of my writing career were a lesson in perseverance, “ she said on her website.

The speed at which she writes books is so extraordinary that some fans have questioned who writes all her books. Does she farm them out like a Damien Hirst of the literary world?

“I was stunned the first time I was asked that question. Who writes my books? Are you kidding? I do. Every word,” she says on her website. “I was shocked at the question, I even mentioned it to my agent who informed me that some very major writers actually hire writers now to write their books and the authors just give them the outlines. I can’t even imagine that, and it seems like cutting corners in a major way to me. I write every word of my books, and do all the editing and correcting. There are no gnomes or elves in my basement or attic. I do all the work myself!!!”

Steel hasn’t written any sequels to her books, which is unusual for somebody so prolific. She misses her characters when she stops writing but when the book is finished, she’s on to the next. Often, she juggles a few at once. But as I pick up Beautiful to read, I realise that underneath Steel’s cliched storylines, there is a message of hope.

Whatever tragedy or loss you may experience, love is always waiting patiently. As the disfigured supermodel Veronique hears in Beautiful: “The scars aren’t what it’s all about, or even the perfect face. It’s about what’s inside you and who you are. You’re beautiful, Veronique, in all the ways that matter. Scars, no scars, it’s irrelevant…I’ve never known anyone like you, not because of your face, but because of your heart.” It might be corny – but at least something always good happens in the end.

‘Suspects’ and ‘Beautiful’ are out now. ‘The High Notes’ is out 11 October