Author

An Evening With The "Queen of Suspense"

Mary Higgins Clark is our nation's best-selling suspense writer, with over 70 million books sold in the U.S. alone, more than 23 of which are best-sellers. This “Queen of Suspense,” is a self-made success, and at the podium, she shares her incredible ride from young widow and mother of five to her status of one of the most prolific writers today.

Mary's father died when she was ten, leaving her, her mother, and two siblings with a pile of debts. A scholarship got her through highschool, and she worked her way through secretarial school. Deciding to reach for all her dreams, Mary signed up for a writing course at New York University. It took her six years and 40 rejection slips before she sold her first short story for $100 in 1956.

As her writing career took off, her family life flourished and she had five children. But her life changed for good when her husband died, leaving her alone to provide for all. With amazing tenacity, she scraped by, eventually to become the successful Where Are the Children?; A Stranger is Watching; The Cradle Will Fall; A Cry in the Night; Stillwatch; Weep No More, My Lady; While My Pretty One Sleeps;

Realizing that freelance writing was not going to pay the bills, she took on a full-time job writing radio scripts and worked on a novel in the early hours. A five-day-a-week biographical program, Portrait of a Patriot, led to Clark's first attempt at full-length fiction. George Washington was the hero of Aspire to the Heavens. Sold mostly in religious bookstores, it was a financial disaster.

Widowed at a young age, she found time to write even while raising her five children, and touches on the struggles she overcame to become one of America’s most popular writersMary Higgins Clark is America's top best-selling suspense writer with over 15 million copies of her books in print. Her latest novels, Moonlight Becomes You; Pretend You Don't See Her; and On the Street Where You Live; have joined the prestigious ranks of her other best-selling books, which include: The Anastasia Syndrome and Other Stories; Lottery Winner; My Gal Sunday; and Silent Night; all published in hardcover by Simon & Schuster.

Ms. Clark's genre is sometimes called "If I had but known." A sub-genre could be: "It's all my fault. If only I hadn't...” But don't misunderstand, her heroines don't bring the disasters on themselves. That's what makes their tragedies so fearsome. Mary Higgins Clark writes about nice people whose lives are invaded. What scares the reader is the "if only" – the thought that whether you live or die may depend on the moment when you decide to take a bus or train. And by the sweat of her brow and the cold sweat on her readers', she makes a good living at it—ranked by industry insiders as one of the most financially successful American women authors.

Once upon a time, it wasn't so. When the book went nowhere, Mary began writing what she had always loved to read—suspense. Where Are the Children? was turned down by two publishing companies (they said it was too horrifying to women readers) before Simon & Schuster published it in 1975. The book was an immediate best-seller.

When the paperback, now in its 20th reprint, was sold to Dell for $100,000, Mary knew she no longer had to worry about money. So she signed up for three-nights-a-week classes at Fordham University, from which she graduated summa cum laude in 1979. Nine years later, she received an honorary PhD. from her alma mater. She also has honorary degrees from Villanova University and Rider College.

Now, more than 12 novels under her belt, all fantastic best-sellers and four of which have already been made into films or television motion pictures, Mary Higgins Clark is at the top of her field. The Federation of Women's Clubs gave her their "The Women of Achievement" award; she was awarded the Grand Prix de Literature of France; she was the 1987 president of the Mystery Writers of America; she was Chairman of the 1988 International Crime Congress; and she is an active member of Literacy Volunteers.

Mary Higgins Clark has five children and five grandchildren. She lives in Saddle River, New Jersey, has an apartment in Manhattan, and a summer home on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.