Shirley Conran, the industrious and proliferous British author whose 1982 novel, “Lace,” was a tale of female autonomy disguised as a bonkbuster (to use the British term for a steamy best ...

She started to work as a journalist; then she started to write books. First “Superwoman” then, a few years later, “Lace”. She hadn’t planned to write a bonkbuster.