They Did It! Mary Higgins Clark and her daughter Carol both have books on the bestseller list

They Did It!

Mary Higgins Clark and her daughter Carol both have books on the bestseller list.

Story by Mary Pat Kelly

They did it! On Sunday, April 27, 2008, Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark became the first mother and daughter authors to place two separate books on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list at the same time. Mary Higgins Clark retains her "Queen of Suspense" crown as her novel Where Are You Now?, the story of a sister's search for her Columbia University student brother who disappeared ten years before yet telephones his mother each Mother's Day, debuted at number one. Zapped, the eleventh mystery in Carol Higgins Clark's fast-paced and very funny series featuring Regan Reilly, the Manhattan private investigator, captured number twelve. Exciting!

As Mary and Carol began the joint book tour that would take them across the country (see CarolHigginsClark.com for the schedule) the pleasure they derive from their work, from their success and from each other was obvious as they began the first of many events signing books at the Mysterious Book Shop and Barnes and Noble in Manhattan's Tribeca. "Blossoms of spring and heaps of good wishes to you, my cherished readers. I hope you enjoy reading this tale as much as I enjoyed writing it," Mary Higgins Clark tells her fans on the acknowledgment page that opens Where Are You Now? That intimacy between the writer and her fans is expressed in the more than 150 million copies of her 27 suspense novels, three collections of short stories, her historical novel and the four Christmas suspense novels written with Carol that have sold worldwide.

Though Mary Higgins Clark's novels center on murder and dark family secrets and put her heroines into heart-pounding jeopardy, they have something of the open-hearted optimism of their creator. She meets life's sorrows head on and refuses to be defeated by them. She attributes this resilience to her Irish-American roots. "I am a descendant of Kellys, Kennedys, Durkins and Higgins, all from the Sligo/Mayo area," Mary says. Her father, Luke Higgins, came to New York in 1905 and, as Mary reports, "kept company" with Nora Durkin for seven years. They married when her father was 45 and her mother almost 40. They had three children. Mary was the middle one and the only girl.

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