Works by
Mary Higgins Clark
(Writer)
[1927 - ]

Audio

• Lucky Day (1990)

• That's the Ticket! and Voices in the Coal Bin  (1990) with Carol Higgins Clark

• The Body in the Closet (1990)

• Double Vision (1991)

• The Lost Angel (1991)

• Plumbing for Willy (1993)

• Stowaway and Milk Run: Two Unabridged Stories (1993)
  In Stowaway, a courageous flight attendant helps a dsperate young man of the underground escape the Soviet police.
  
  In Milkrun, a flight attendant becomes immersed in a web of deception when she serves as a courier of an important documetn -- only to find it's been stolen during the flight.

• Terror Stalks the Class Reunion (1998)
  Audio

• The Night Collection (1998, 2006)
  Stillwatch, A Cry in the Night

• The Classic Clark Collection (2002)
  Loves Music Loves to Dance, I'll Be Seeing You, All Around the Town, and Where Are the Children

Children's Books

• Ghost Ship: A Cape Cod Story (2007) with Wendell Minor, Illustrator
  Thomas loved his summer visits to his grandmother's on Cape Cod. He spent hours wondering about the sailing ships of the past and imagining their stories. He dreamed of being on a sailing ship himself. One afternoon after a night of terrible thunderstorms, Thomas finds, deep in the sand, a weathered, old-fashioned belt buckle. When he picks it up, a boy his own age, Silas Rich, who was a cabin boy on a ship called the Monomoy that sailed almost 250 years ago, appears. Suddenly the world of sailing ships is very near as Silas tells his tale.
  
  Beloved and bestselling author Mary Higgins Clark tells a story of mystery and adventure that will transport readers to a time and place beyond their imaginings in her first book for children. Wendell Minor's inspired paintings make a time long ago very real.  Ages 9-12

Collections

• The Anastasia Syndrome and Other Stories (1990)

• Death on the Cape and Other Stories (1993)

• The Lottery Winner: Alvirah And Willy Stories (1994)
  Alvirah Meehan, one of Mary Higgins Clark's most beloved characters, returns in these dazzling, intertwined tales of sleuthing and suspense. Alvirah, the former cleaning lady who struck it rich in the lottery, made her first appearance in Weep No More, My Lady. Now, with her devoted mate, Willy, the ever-resourceful Alvirah delves into crime-solving on a grand scale -- and with her own inimitable style.
  
  Among their many adventures, Alvirah and Willy find a dead actress in their Central Park South condominium upon their return from London in "The Body in the Closet." Needing a break from the big city, they escape to Cape Cod -- only to meet a would-be heiress framed for murder in "Death on the Cape." When Alvirah and Willy seek the tranquillity of the Cypress Point Spa, it's the perfect getaway -- until a jewel thief turns up in "The Lottery Winner." Back in Manhattan, the search for a neighbor's missing newborn makes for a suspense-filled Christmas in "Bye, Baby Bunting."

• The Night Awakens: A Mystery Writers of America Anthology (1998)

Fiction

• Mount Vernon Love Story: A Novel of George and Martha Washington (1968, 2002)


Always a lover of history, Mary Higgins Clark wrote this extensively researched biographical novel and titled it Aspire to the Heavens: A Portrait of George Washington, after the motto of George Washington's mother. Published in 1969, the book was more recently discovered by a Washington family descendant and reissued as Mount Vernon Love Story. Dispelling the widespread belief that although George Washington married Martha Dandridge Custis, he reserved his true love for Sally Carey Fairfax, his best friend's wife, Mary Higgins Clark describes the Washington marriage as one full of tenderness and passion, as a bond between two people who shared their lives -- even the bitter hardship of a winter in Valley Forge -- in every way. In this author's skilled hands, the history, the love, and the man come fully and dramatically alive.

• Where Are the Children? (1975)
  The story of a woman whose past holds a terrible secret. Nancy Harmon had been found guilty in a California court of murdering her two young children, but she was released from prison on a legal technicality. Deciding to make a fresh start, to change her identity, she left San Francisco and sought tranquillity on Cape Cod.
  
  Seven years later, Nancy is remarried and has two small children: five-year-old Michael and three-year-old Missy. Finally she feels that she has been able to reclaim all that she had lost. Then the nightmare begins again.
  
  One day a local Cape Cod paper runs an article about a famous California murder trial involving a mother accused of killing her two children. Along with the article is a photo of Nancy. On that same morning, Michael and Missy disappear. They had been playing in the yard, but when she looked for them, they were gone...all that remained was Missy's red mitten.
  
  While Nancy becomes the prime suspect in the disappearance of her children, no one in the small Cape Cod town is aware of a stranger in their midst -- someone whose plans for revenge have been festering for seven long years.
  Movie

• A Stranger is Watching (1978)
  Ronald Thompson knows he never killed Nina Peterson... yet in two days the state of Connecticut will take his life, having found him guilty via due process of law. But Thompson's death will not stop the pain and anger of Nina's husband, Steve. Thompson's death will not still the fears of Nna's six-year-old son, Neil, witness to his mother's brutal slaying. Not even the love and friendship of Sharon Martin, a journalist who is slowly becoming a part of their world, will ever erase their bitter memories. Only time, perhaps, will heal their wounds. But in the shadows a stranger waits, a cunning psychopath who has killed before, who has unfinished business at the Peterson home...
  Movie

• The Cradle Will Fall (1981)
  A minor road accident landed county prosecutor Katie DeMaio in Westlake Hospital. That night, from her window, she thought she saw a man load a woman's body into the trunk of a car...or was it just a sleeping pill induced nightmare? At work the next day, Katie began investigating a suicide that looked more like murder. Initial evidence pointed elsewhere, but medical examiner Richard Carroll saw a trail leading to Dr. Edgar Highley. He suspected that the famous doctor's work "curing" infertile women was more than controversial -- that it was deceitful, depraved, and often deadly. But before Richard could tell Katie his fears, she left the office for the weekend and an appointment for routine surgery...in Dr. Highley's operating room.

• A Cry In The Night (1982)
  When Jenny MacPartland meets the man of her dreams while working in a New York art gallery, she's ecstatic. Painter Erich Krueger -- whose exquisite landscapes are making him a huge success -- is handsome, sensitive...and utterly in love with her. They marry quickly and Jenny plans a loving home on Erich's vast Minnesota farm. But lonely days and eerie nights strain her nerves to the breaking point and test her sanity. Caught in a whirlpool of shattering events, Jenny soon unearths a past more terrifying than she dares imagine...tragic secrets that threaten her marriage, her children, her life.

• Stillwatch (1984)
  "I TOLD YOU NOT TO COME..."
  
  Slipped under the door of her Georgetown home, the note was an ominous reminder of Pat Traymore's past. The beautiful young television journalist had come to glamorous, high-powered Washington to produce a TV series. Her subject: Senator Abigail Jennings, slated for nomination as the first woman vice president of the United States.
  
  With the help of an old flame, Congresman Sam Kingsley, Pat delves into Abigail's life, only to turn up horrifying facts that threaten to destroy senator's reputation and her career. Worse still, sinister connections to Pat's own childhood and the nightmare secrets hidden within are surfacing -- secrets waiting to destroy her.

• While My Pretty One Sleeps (1989)
  Neeve Kearny may be the only person in New York worried about the disappearance of Ethel Lambston. Ethel, a bestselling author famous for her juicy exposés, is one of the best customers at Neeve's exclusive Madison Avenue boutique. But Ethel's ex-husband, her parasitical nephew, and the fashion moguls skewered in her latest article all have reason to be glad she's no longer around.
  
  When Ethel Lambston is found with her throat cut, Neeve's memories of her mother's long-unsolved murder loom up once again. Now as an innocent witness in the Lambston investigation, Neeve is drawn into a new nightmare...a sinister labyrinth of greed and ambition that will lead her into mortal danger...
  
  A stunning tale of murder, glamour and romance, While My Pretty One Sleeps is the most exciting novel yet from Mary Higgins Clark, America's undisputed master of suspense.

• Loves Music, Loves to Dance (1991)
  A Dance of Death... Erin and Darcy aren't the kind of girls who normally answer personal ads. Young, successful and thrilled with life in the big city, the best friends are ready to enjoy all the romance and glamour that New York has to offer. But when two women agree as a lark to answer personal ads to help a film-maker friend in her research, the glittering city turns deadly. Soon, Erin's body is found on an abandoned pier-a mysterious high-heeled dancing slipper on one lifeless foot. Devastated by her friend's tragic death, Darcy begins a treacherous dating game hoping to find Erin's killer. What Darcy doesn't know is that Erin wasn't his first victim...and that now the killer has set his sights on her.

• All Around the Town (1992)
  When Laurie Kenyon, a twenty-one-year-old student, is accused of murdering her English professor, she has no memory of the crime. Her fingerprints, however, are everywhere. When she asks her sister, attorney Sarah, to mount her defense, Sarah in turn brings in psychiatrist Justin Donnelly. Kidnapped at the age of four and victimized for two years, Laurie has developed astounding coping skills. Only when the unbearable memories of those lost years are released can the truth of the crime come out -- and only then can the final sadistic plan of her abductor, whose obsession is stronger than ever, be revealed.

• I'll Be Seeing You (1993)
  The murdered woman could have been her double. When reporter Meghan Collins sees the sheet-wrapped corpse in a New York City hospital, she feels as if she's staring into her own face. And Meghan has troubles enough already without this bizarre experience. Nine months ago, her much-loved father's car spun off a New York bridge. Now, investigators are saying that there's no trace of his car in the river, and they suspect he faked his own death. With frightening speed, links start to appear between Meghan's father and her dead lookalike. Meghan may be in danger herself, but she's determined to find the truth to the mystery. In a nightmare journey spiraling from New York to Connecticut to Arizona, Meghan finds that the truth can sometimes be deadly.

• Let Me Call You Sweetheart (1995)
  It's a minor accident that brings prosecutor Kerry McGrath to the plastic surgeon's office with her beloved daughter, Robin. But even as the doctor assures Kerry that her daughter's scars will heal, she spies a familiar-looking beautiful woman in the waiting room and is seized by an overpowering sense of deja vu. When, on a return visit, she sees the same haunting face -- on another woman -- she has an intense flash of recognition: it's the face of Suzanne Reardon, the "Sweetheart Murder" victim, killed more than ten years ago! The case resulted in a guilty verdict and life sentence for Suzanne's husband, Skip. But for what possible reason would Dr. Smith be giving his patients the face of a dead woman?
  
  As Kerry immerses herself in a fresh investigation, she is catapulted into the strange and ominous territory of those so obsessed with beauty they'll kill for it. Each new piece of evidence she unearths reveals a disturbing cache of questions. Not only does everyone involved want to keep the case closed, it's clear somebody will stop at nothing to keep it sealed forever. As she delves deeper she finds she's wrestling with a force so sinister that her own life -- and her daughter's -- is threatened with increasing peril....
  
  Interweaving fascinating characters with deeply daring, staggeringly unpredictable plot twists, Mary Higgins Clark reminds us that she is, indeed, America's Queen of Suspense.

• Remember Me (1995)
  A killer turns a young family's dream holiday into an unfathomable nightmare....Menley Nichols and her husband, Adam, a criminal attorney, rent a house on Cape Cod, in the hope of restoring their faltering marriage. The birth of their daughter, Hannah, has revitalized their relationship, but Menley has never stopped blaming herself for the accidental death of her two-year-old son. The serenity of the Cape promises a new start.
  
  In Remember House, an eighteenth-century landmark with a sinister past, strange incidents force Menley to relive the accident that killed her son, and she begins to fear for Hannah's safety. Then Adam takes on a client suspected of murder when his wealthy young bride of only three months drowns in a storm -- and the family is drawn into a rising tide of terror. A confrontation on a dark, rain-swept beach leads to a harrowing climax that only Mary Higgins Clark could have created.

• Moonlight Becomes You (1996)
  At a party in Manhattan, Maggie Holloway -- one of the fashion world's most successful photographers -- is thrilled to be reunited with her beloved stepmother. A widow now, Nuala Moore is equally delighted to see her long-lost stepdaughter, and invites Maggie to spend a few weeks at her home in Newport, Rhode Island.
  
  But when Maggie arrives, she finds Nuala murdered, apparently by a burglar. Heartbroken, Maggie is stunned to learn she had inherited Nuala's stunning Victorian home...and horrified when she begins to suspect that Nuala's death was not random, but part of a diabolical plot conceived by a twisted mind. When Nuala's dear old friend, Greta Shipley, does suddenly of supoosedly natural causes, Maggie is convinced that there is a link between these two and other recent deaths among the older women of Newport. What she doesn't realize is that she has now become a target for the killer as well, and that each clue she uncovers brings her closer to an unimaginable fate.

• My Gal Sunday (1996)
  Henry Parker Britland IV is wealthy and worldly -- a beloved former president who, still youthful, is enjoying early retirement. His new wife, Sunday, is beautiful, smart and seventeen years younger than he, and has just been elected to Congress in a stunning upset victory that has made her the darling of the media.
  
  Henry and Sunday make a formidable team of sleuths -- and never more so than when they set out to solve crimes occurring among their friends in political high society.
  
  When Henry's former secretary of state is indicted for the murder of his mistress, Henry and Sunday suspect he is taking the fall for a crime of passion he did not commit. But why?
  
  With cases ranging from a crime on the presidential yacht to a kidnapping that brings Henry back to the White House as he races against time to unravel the plot, there is never a dull moment for the ex-president and his bride -- or the reader.
  
  With her wit and gift for characterization, the creator of the popular Alvirah and Willy stories brings us another marvelously endearing sleuthing duo, destined to return again and again.

• Pretend You Don't See Her (1997)
  Mary Higgins Clark sends chills down readers' spines with the story of Lacey Farrell, a rising star on the Manhattan real estate scene. One day, while showing a luxurious skyline co-op, Lacey is witness to a murder -- and to the dying words of the victim.... The dying woman is convinced that the attacker was after her dead daughter's journal -- which Lacey gives to the police, but not before making a copy for herself. It's an impulse that later proves nearly fatal.
  
  Placed in the witness protection program and sent to live in the Minneapolis area, Lacey must assume a fake identity, at least until the killer can be brought to trial. There she meets Tom Lynch, a radio talk-show host whom she tentatively begins to date -- until the strain of deception makes her break it off. Then she discovers the killer has traced her to Minneapolis. Armed with nothing more than her own courage and clues from the journal, Lacey heads back to New York, determined to uncover who's behind the deaths of the two women -- before she's the next casualty.

• You Belong To Me (1998)
  In this breathtaking new novel from the reigning diva of suspense, a psychopathic killer stalks lonely women aboard cruise ships -- giving grisly new significance to the lyrics of an old sweet song...
  
  When psychologist Dr. Susan Chandler uses her call-in radio show to explore the issue of lonesome women who disappear and are later found to have been victims of seductive killers, she has no way of knowing she is exposing herself -- and those closest to her -- to the very horror she is warning others against.
  
  After a listener calls in offering information about the mysterious disappearance from a luxury ocean liner of wealthy investment advisor Regina Clausen, the caller meets with a terrible accident. Or so say the police. As Susan begins to investigate, she quickly finds herself in a race against time -- and an assassin who targets not only vulnerable women, but anyone who might offer clues to his identity. Inching closer to the truth, Susan makes shocking dual discoveries: that the killer may be an important figure in her own life, and that she herself is marked for murder.

• We'll Meet Again (1999)
  Dr. Gary Lasch, prominent Greenwich, Connecticut, doctor and founder of the HMO Remington Health Management, is found dead in his home, his skull crushed by a blow with a heavy bronze sculpture, and his wife, Molly, in bed covered with his blood. It was the Lasches' housekeeper, Edna Barry, who made the grisly discovery the morning after Molly's unexpectedly early return from Cape Cod, where she had gone to seclude herself upon learning of her husband's infidelity. As the evidence against Molly grows, her lawyer plea-bargains a manslaughter charge to avoid a murder conviction.
  
  Released from prison nearly six years later, Molly reasserts her innocence to reporters, among them an old school friend, Fran Simmons, an investigative reporter and anchor for a true-crime show. Molly convinces Fran to research and produce a program on her husband's death, and as hidden aspects of Gary Lasch's life and the affairs of Remington Health Management come to light, Fran herself becomes a target for murder.
  Movie (2002), Paolo Barzman, director with Gedeon Burkhard and Laura Leighton DVD  VHS

• All Through the Night (2000)
  All of Alvirah's deductive powers and Willy's world-class common sense are called upon as the two stumble into a Christmas mystery. A woman abandons her newborn at a Manhattan church. Simultaneously, a thief is absconding with a treasured artifact, a chalice adorned with a star-shaped diamond. To elude police, he grabs the stroller and disappears. Seven years later, the mother returns to the scene and finds Alvirah and Willy helping neighborhood kids prepare for a Christmas pageant at an after-school shelter. Soon the savvy sleuths set out to solve the puzzle of the missing child and chalice -- and to unmask scam artists threatening to shut down the shelter.

• Before I Say Good-Bye (2000)
  When Nell MacDermott learns that her husband, architect Adam Cauliff, and three of his business associates have died in an explosion of his new cabin cruiser, she is not only devastated but wracked with guilt. The last time she saw Adam, they had a bitter quarrel over her plan to run for the congressional seat long held by her grandfather; she had told him not to come home.
  
  As the investigation into the boat's explosion proceeds, Nell learns that it was not an accident but a bomb. Despite her skepticism, Nell is swayed by her great-aunt Gert, a believer in psychic powers, to see a medium claiming to be Adam's channel.
  
  While trying to unravel the threads of Adam's past and his violent end, Nell consults the medium, who transmits messages to her with instructions from Adam. The story reaches a powerful climax in Nell's final encounter with the medium, in which she learns the truth about the explosion -- truth she can't be allowed to live and tell.

• On the Street Where You Live (2001)
  Following a nasty divorce and the trauma of being stalked, criminal defense attorney Emily Graham leaves Albany to work in Manhattan. Craving roots, she buys her ancestral home, a Victorian house in the seaside resort town of Spring Lake, New Jersey. Her family sold the house in 1892, after one of Emily's forebears, Madeline Shapley, then a young girl, disappeared.
  
  As the house is renovated and a pool dug, a skeleton is found and identiWed as Martha Lawrence, a young Spring Lake woman who vanished several years ago. Within her hand is the Wnger bone of another woman, with a ring -- a Shapley family heirloom -- still on it. Determined to Wnd the connection between the two murders, Emily becomes a threat to a seductive killer...who chooses her as the next victim.

• Daddy's Little Girl (2002)
  Ellie Cavanaugh was seven years old when her older sister was murdered near their home in New York's Westchester County. It was young Ellie's tearful testimony that put Rob Westerfield, the nineteen-year-old scion of a prominent family, in jail despite the existence of two other viable suspects. Twenty-two years later, Westerfield, who maintains his innocence, is paroled. Determined to thwart his attempts to pin the crime on another, Ellie, an investiga-tive reporter for an Atlanta newspaper, returns home and starts writing a book that will conclusively prove Westerfield's guilt. As she delves deeper into her research, however, she uncovers horrifying facts that shed new light on her sister's murder. With each discovery she comes closer to a confrontation with a desperate killer.

• The Second Time Around (2003)
  When Nicholas Spencer, the charismatic head of a company that has developed an anticancer vaccine, disappears without a trace, reporter Marcia "Carley" DeCarlo is assigned the story. Word that Spencer, if alive, has made off with huge sums of money -- including the life savings of many employees -- doesn't do much to change Carley's already low opinion of Spencer's wife, Lynn, who is also Carley's stepsister and whom everyone believes is involved. But when Lynn's life is threatened, she asks Carley to help her prove that she wasn't her husband's accomplice. As the facts unfold, however, Carley herself becomes the target of a dangerous, sinister group that will stop at nothing to get what they want.

• No Place Like Home (2005)
  Ten-year-old Liza Barton shoots her mother while trying to protect her from her violent husband -- Liza's stepfather. While the death is ruled accidental, the tabloids still compare Liza to the child murderess Lizzie Borden.
  
  Liza's adoptive parents change her name to Celia and try to erase all traces of her past. Widowed after a brief marriage in which she had a son, Jack, she remarries a young lawyer. Celia is happy until, on her birthday, he presents her with a gift -- the house where she killed her mother. On moving in, they find the words LITTLE LIZZIE'S PLACE - BEWARE painted in red letters on the lawn. When the real estate agent who sold the house to her husband is murdered, she becomes a suspect. As she struggles to prove her innocence, Celia and her little son are being stalked by the killer.

• Two Little Girls in Blue (2006)
  When Margaret and Steve Frawley come home to Connecticut from a black-tie dinner in New York, their three-year-old twins, Kathy and Kelly, are gone. The police found the babysitter unconscious, and a ransom note from the "Pied Piper" demands eight million dollars. Steve's global investment firm puts up the money, but when they go to retrieve the twins, only Kelly is in the car. The dead driver's suicide note says he inadvertently killed Kathy.
  
  At the memorial, Kelly tugs Margaret's arm and says: "Mommy, Kathy is very scared of that lady. She wants to come home right now." At first, only Margaret believes that the twins are communicating and that Kathy is still alive. But as Kelly's warnings become increasingly specific and alarming, FBI agents set out on a desperate search.

• I Heard That Song Before (2007)
  At the center of her novel is Kay Lansing, who has grown up in Englewood, New Jersey, daughter of the landscaper to the wealthy and powerful Carrington family. Their mansion -- a historic seventeenth-century manor house transported stone by stone from Wales in 1848 -- has a hidden chapel. One day, accompanying her father to work, six-year-old Kay succumbs to curiosity and sneaks into the chapel. There, she overhears a quarrel between a man and a woman who is demanding money from him. When she says that this will be the last time, his caustic response is: "I heard that song before."
  
  That same evening, the Carringtons hold a formal dinner dance after which Peter Carrington, a student at Princeton, drives home Susan Althorp, the eighteen-year-old daughter of neighbors. While her parents hear her come in, she is not in her room the next morning and is never seen or heard from again.
  
  Throughout the years, a cloud of suspicion hangs over Peter Carrington. At age forty-two, head of the family business empire, he is still "a person of interest" in the eyes of the police, not only for Susan Althorp's disappearance but also for the subsequent drowning death of his own pregnant wife in their swimming pool.
  
  Kay Lansing, now living in New York and working as a librarian in Englewood, goes to see Peter Carrington to ask for permission to hold a cocktail party on his estate to benefit a literacy program, which he later grants. Kay comes to see Peter as maligned and misunderstood, and when he begins to court her after the cocktail party, she falls in love with him. Over the objections of her beloved grandmother Margaret O'Neil, who raised her after her parents' early deaths, she marries him. To her dismay, she soon finds that he is a sleepwalker whose nocturnal wanderings draw him to the spot at the pool where his wife met her end.
  
  Susan Althorp's mother, Gladys, has always been convinced that Peter Carrington is responsible for her daughter's disappearance, a belief shared by many in the community. Disregarding her husband's protests about reopening the case, Gladys, now terminally ill, has hired a retired New York City detective to try to find out what happened to her daughter. Gladys wants to know before she dies.
  
  Kay, too, has developed gnawing doubts about her husband. She believes that the key to the truth about his guilt or innocence lies in the scene she witnessed as a child in the chapel and knows she must learn the identity of the man and woman who quarreled there that day. Yet, she plunges into this pursuit realizing that "that knowledge may not be enough to save my husband's life, if indeed it deserves to be saved." What Kay does not even remotely suspect is that uncovering what lies behind these memories may cost her her own life.

• Deck the Halls (2000)
  Three days before Christmas, Regan Reilly, the dynamic young sleuth featured in the novels of Carol Higgins Clark, accidentally meets Alvirah Meehan, Mary Higgins Clark's famous lottery winner and amateur detective, at a New Jersey dentist's office. That's where it all begins.
  
  While Regan's mother, Nora, the famous mystery writer, is in the hospital with a broken leg, her husband, Luke, and his chauffeur, Rosita, are kidnapped and held for a million-dollar ransom. Together, Regan and Alvirah track the case as the inept yet dangerous kidnappers make their demands known. Meanwhile, Luke and Rosita are held captive on a houseboat on the Hudson River and a fierce

• The Christmas Thief (2004) with Carol Higgins Clark
  The folks who picked a beautiful eighty-foot blue spruce from Stowe, Vermont, to be Rockefeller Center's famous Christmas tree don't have a clue that Packy Noonan, a scam artist just released from prison, hid priceless diamonds in it more than twelve years ago. But when Packy learns that his special tree will be heading to New York City the next morning, he knows he has to act fast.
  
  What Packy does not know is that Alvirah, everyone's favorite lottery winner turned amateur sleuth, and savvy private investigator Regan Reilly are visiting Stowe with their friend Opal, who lost all her lottery winnings in Packy's scam. And just when they're supposed to head home, they learn that the tree is missing . . . and that Opal has disappeared.

• Kitchen Privileges: A Memoir  (2002)
  Even as a young girl, growing up in the Bronx, Mary Higgins Clark knew she wanted to be a writer. The gift of storytelling was a part of her Irish ancestry, so it followed naturally that she would later use her sharp eye, keen intelligence, and inquisitive nature to create stories about the people and things she observed.
  
  Along with all Americans, those who lived in New York City's borough of the Bronx suffered during the Depression. So it followed that when Mary's father died, her mother, deciding to open the family home to boarders, placed a discreet sign next to the front door that read, FURNISHED ROOMS. KITCHEN PRIVILEGES. Very shortly the first in a succession of tenants arrived: a couple dodging bankruptcy who moved in with their wild-eyed boxer; a teacher who wept endlessly over her lost love; a deadbeat who tripped over a lamp while trying to sneak out in the middle of the night...
  
  The family's struggle to make ends meet; her days as a scholarship student in an exclusive girls' academy; her after-school employment as a hotel switchboard operator (happily listening in on the guests' conversations); the death of her beloved older brother in World War II; her brief career as a flight attendant for Pan Am (a job taken after a friend who flew with the airline said ever so casually, "God, it was beastly hot in Calcutta"); her marriage to Warren Clark, on whom she'd had a crush for many years; sitting at the kitchen table, writing stories, and finally selling the first one for one hundred dollars (after six years and some forty rejections!) -- all these experiences figure into Kitchen Privileges, as does her husband's untimely death, which left her a widowed mother of five young children.
  
  Determined to care for her family and to make a career for herself, she went to work writing scripts for a radio show, but in her spare time she began writing novels. Her first, a biographical novel about the life of George Washington titled Aspire to the Heavens, found a publisher but disappeared without a trace when the publisher folded. (Recently it was rediscovered by a descendant of the Washington family and was reissued under the title Mount Vernon Love Story.) The experience, however, gave her the background and the preparation for writing Where Are the Children? which went on to become an international bestseller. That novel launched her career and was the first of twenty-seven (and still counting!) bestselling books of suspense.
  
  As Mary Higgins Clark has said when asked if she might consider giving up writing for a life of leisure, "Never! To be happy for a year, win the lottery. To be happy for life, love what you do."
  
  In Kitchen Privileges, she reflects on the joy that her life as a writer has brought her, and shares with readers the love that she has found.

• Weep No More, My Lady (1992)
  Weep No More, My Lady, Stillwatch, and A Cry in the Night

• Mary Higgins Clark: Three Complete Novels (1995)
  Three Complete Novels: Where Are the Children? a Stranger Is Watching, the Cradle Will Fall

• Mary Higgins Clark: Three New York Times Bestselling Novels (1996)
  While My Pretty Sleeps, Loves Music, Loves to Dance, All Around the Town

• Mary Higgins Clark Omnibus (1997)

• Silent Night/All Through the Night: Two Christmas Novels (2000)


In Silent Night, Brian, a seven-year-old boy, is in New York City at Christmas with his mother and ten-year-old brother to visit his father, critically ill in the hospital. They plan to give him a St. Christopher medal, in the belief that it will make him well. When Brian sees a woman steal his mother's wallet, with the medal in it, he embarks on a dangerous journey that changes the life of his mother and that of the thief.

With All Through the Night, two of Mary Higgins Clark's most endearing characters -- Alvirah, the lottery winner turned amateur sleuth, and her husband, Willy -- are caught up in a Christmas mystery that begins when a young mother leaves her newborn child on the doorstep of a church rectory on Manhattan's Upper West Side, and continues with the theft of a precious chalice from the church. It is a captivating tale of false identities and old wrongs made right, as well as a mystery that calls for all of Alvirah's deductive powers and Willy's world-class common sense.

Even one story by America's Queen of Suspense is cause for cheer, but this single-volume edition of Silent Night and All Through the Night is a treat for all of Mary Higgins Clark's devoted fans at any time of the year.

• Lady Sleuth, Lady Sleuth, Fly Away Home (2000


Audio cassette

• Mary Higgins Three Bestselling Novels (2001)
  I'll Be Seeing You/Remember Me/Let Me Call You Sweetheart