Daddy's Little Girl by Mary Higgins Clark

But business slowed during the Great Depression and her father, forced to work ever longer hours as he laid off employees, died in his sleep in 1939. Mary Clark’s father ran a popular pub that did well enough for the family to afford a maid and for her mother to prepare meals for strangers in need. She would later take on the last name Clark after marriage. She was born Mary Higgins in New York City in 1927, the second of three children. Her own life taught her lessons of resilience, strengthened by her Catholic faith, that she shared with her fictional heroines. The greatest compliment I can receive is, ‘I read your darned book ‘til 4 in the morning, and now I’m tired.’ I say, ‘Then you get your money’s worth.’” But if you’re reading my book, I want you stuck with reading the next paragraph. “There are wonderful sagas you can thoroughly enjoy a section and put it down. “You want to turn the page,” she told The Associated Press in 2013. Mary Higgins Clark specialized in women triumphing over danger, such as the besieged young prosecutor in “Just Take My Heart” or the mother of two and art gallery worker whose second husband is a madman in “A Cry in the Night.” Mary Clark’s goal as an author was simple, if rarely easy: keep the readers reading. She also collaborated on several novels with her daughter, Carol Higgins Clark.

Many of her books, including “A Stranger is Watching” and “Lucky Day,” were adapted for movies and television. Sales topped 100 million copies and honors came from all over, whether a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in France or a “Grand Master” statuette back home from the Mystery Writers of America. She was always absolutely sure of what they wanted to read - and, perhaps more important, what they didn’t want to read - and yet she managed to surprise them with every book.”Ī widow with five children in her late 30s, she became a perennial best-seller over the second half of her life, writing or co-writing “A Stranger Is Watching,” “Daddy’s Little Girl” and more than 50 other favorites. “She understood them as if they were members of her own family. “Nobody ever bonded more completely with her readers than Mary did,” her longtime editor Michael Korda said in statement.

Daddy's Little Girl by Mary Higgins Clark