Dashing Through the Snow (With: Carol Higgins Clark)
2008
I’ll Walk Alone
2011
The Lost Years
2012
As Time Goes By
2016
All By Myself, Alone
2017
Publication Order of Under Suspicion Books
I’ve Got You Under My Skin
2014
The Cinderella Murder (With: Alafair Burke)
2014
All Dressed in White (With: Alafair Burke)
2015
The Sleeping Beauty Killer (With: Alafair Burke)
2016
Every Breath You Take (With: Alafair Burke)
2017
You Don’t Own Me (With: Alafair Burke)
2018
Piece of My Heart (With: Alafair Burke)
2020
It Had to Be You (With: Alafair Burke)
2024
Publication Order of Where Are the Children Books
Where Are the Children?
1975
Where Are the Children Now? (With: Alafair Burke)
2023
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
Aspire to the Heavens / Mount Vernon Love Story
1968
A Stranger Is Watching
1977
The Cradle Will Fall
1980
A Cry in the Night
1982
Stillwatch
1984
While My Pretty One Sleeps
1989
Loves Music, Loves to Dance
1991
All Around the Town
1992
I’ll Be Seeing You
1993
Remember Me
1994
Let Me Call You Sweetheart
1995
Silent Night
1995
Moonlight Becomes You
1996
Pretend You Don’t See Her
1997
You Belong to Me
1998
We’ll Meet Again
1999
Before I Say Good-Bye
2000
On the Street Where You Live
2001
He Sees You When You’re Sleeping (With: Carol Higgins Clark)
2001
Daddy’s Little Girl
2002
The Second Time Around
2003
Nighttime Is My Time
2004
No Place Like Home
2005
Two Little Girls in Blue
2006
I Heard That Song Before
2007
Where Are You Now?
2008
Just Take My Heart
2009
The Shadow of Your Smile
2010
Daddy’s Gone a Hunting
2013
The Melody Lingers On
2015
I’ve Got My Eyes on You
2018
Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry
2019
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
The Anastasia Syndrome and Other Stories
1989
Death on the Cape and Other Stories
1993
My Gal Sunday
1996
Death Wears a Beauty Mask and Other Stories
2015
Publication Order of Children’s Books
Ghost Ship
2007
The Magical Christmas Horse
2011
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
Kitchen Privileges: A Memoir
2002
About Mary Higgins Clark
Mary Higgins Clark (1927 to 2020) was an American author of suspense novels, beginning with “Where Are the Children?” in 1975. She published more than fifty books, every one of them a bestseller in the United States, and they have sold more than 100 million copies there.
She was born Mary Theresa Eleanor Higgins in New York City on 24 December 1927 and grew up in the Bronx, the daughter of an Irish immigrant who ran a pub and who died when she was eleven. After secretarial school she wrote catalogue copy at Remington Rand, then spent 1949 as a Pan American flight attendant before marrying Warren Clark, with whom she had five children. She took writing classes at New York University and sold her first short story, “Stowaway”, in 1956 after six years and forty rejections. When her husband died in 1964 she supported the family by writing four-minute radio scripts.
Her first book, “Aspire to the Heavens” (1968), a novel about George and Martha Washington, sold poorly. She turned to suspense, and Simon & Schuster bought “Where Are the Children?” for $3,000; the paperback rights then went for $100,000. Her second suspense novel, “A Stranger Is Watching”, sold for $1.5 million. Both were made into cinema films in the 1980s, and many later novels were adapted for television. She also completed a philosophy degree at Fordham University in 1979.
Most of her novels stand alone, but two sets of characters recur. Alvirah Meehan, a cleaner who wins the lottery, and her husband Willy, a plumber, turn amateur detectives in a run of books that includes four Christmas mysteries written with her daughter Carol Higgins Clark. The Under Suspicion series, written with Alafair Burke after the first volume, follows Laurie Moran, the producer of a television programme that re-examines unsolved cases.
Higgins Clark won France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 1980, was president of the Mystery Writers of America in 1987 and was named a Grand Master by that organisation in 2000. It also presents an award for suspense fiction in her name. Her last solo novel was “Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry” (2019). She died in Naples, Florida, on 31 January 2020, aged 92. Burke has since published “Where Are the Children Now?” (2023) and “It Had to Be You” (2024) under both their names.
