CLARK MARY HIGGINS download all books 16 books

"Queen of Suspense" Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke are back with their fourth book in the *New York Times* bestselling Under Suspicion series; *Every Breath You Take* follows television producer's Laurie Moran investigation of the unsolved Met Gala murder--in which a wealthy widow was pushed to her death from the famous museum's rooftop. Laurie Moran's professional life is a success--her television show *Under Suspicion* is a hit, both in the ratings and its record of solving cold cases. But her romantic break from former host Alex Buckley has left her with on-air talent she can't stand--Ryan Nichols--and a sense of loneliness, despite her loving family. Now Ryan has suggested a new case. Three years ago, Virginia Wakeling, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and one of the museum's most generous donors, was found in the snow, after being thrown from the museum's roof on the night of its most...

IThe Lost Years,

Biblical scholar Jonathan Lyons believes he has found the rarest of parchments—a letter that may have been written by Jesus Christ. Stolen from the Vatican Library in the 1500s, the letter was assumed to be lost forever.

Now, under the promise of secrecy, Jonathan is able to confirm his findings with several other experts. But he also confides in a family friend his suspicion that someone he once trusted wants to sell the parchment and cash in.

Within days Jonathan is found shot to death in his study. At the same time, his wife, Kathleen, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, is found hiding in the study closet, incoherent and clutching the murder weapon. Even in her dementia, Kathleen has known that her husband was carrying on a long-term affair.

Did Kathleen kill her husband in a jealous rage, as the police contend? Or is his death tied to the larger question: Who has possession of the priceless parchment that has now gone missing?

It is up to their daughter, twenty-eight-year-old Mariah, to clear her mother of murder charges and unravel the real mystery behind her father’s death.

Mary Higgins Clark’s is at once a breathless murder mystery and a hunt for what may be the most precious religious and archaeological treasure of all time.

At age eighty-two and in failing health, Olivia Morrow knows she has little time left. The last of her line, she faces a momentous choice: expose a long-held family secret, or take it with her to her grave.

Olivia has in her possession letters from her deceased cousin Catherine, a nun, now being considered for beatification by the Catholic Church-the final step before sainthood. In her lifetime, Sister Catherine had founded seven hospitals for disabled children. Now the cure of a four-year-old boy dying of brain cancer is being attributed to her. After his case was pronounced medically hopeless, the boy's desperate mother had organized a prayer crusade to Sister Catherine, leading to his miraculous recovery.

The letters Olivia holds are the evidence that Catherine gave birth at age seventeen to a child, a son, and gave him up for adoption. Olivia knows the identity of the young man who fathered Catherine's child: Alex Gannon, who went on to become a world-famous doctor, scientist, and inventor holding medical patents.

Now, two generations later, thirty-one-year-old pediatrician Dr. Monica Farrell, Catherine's granddaughter, stands as the rightful heir to what remains of the family fortune. But in telling Monica who she really is, Olivia would have to betray Catherine's wishes and reveal the story behind Monica's ancestry.

The Gannon fortune is being squandered by Alex's nephews Greg and Peter Gannon, and other board members of the Gannon Foundation, who camouflage their profligate lifestyles with philanthropy.

Now their carefully constructed image is cracking. Greg, a prominent financier, is under criminal investigation, and Peter, a Broadway producer, is a suspect in the murder of a young woman who has been extorting money from him.

The only people aware of Olivia's impending choice are those exploiting the Gannon inheritance. To silence Olivia and prevent Monica from learning the secret, some of them will stop at nothing-even murder.

Clark's riveting new novel explores the juxtaposition of medical science and religious faith, and the search for identity by the daughter of a man adopted at birth.

When Kay Lansing marries wealthy widower Peter Carrington, she is well aware of the rumours surrounding the mysterious death of Peter's first wife Grace, who was found floating in the family pool ten years ago, pregnant at the time. Kay also discovers that Peter is a chronic sleepwalker who suffers from periodic nightmares. When the police arrive at her doorstep with a warrant for Peter's arrest in connection with another murder – that of a woman Peter had escorted to a high school senior prom twenty-two years ago – Kay begins to fear that she has married a sleepwalking murderer, and she resolves to find out the truth behind the puzzling deaths. But are the two deaths linked? And why does a melody that Kay cannot identify keep playing in her head every time she approaches the family chapel?

“For sheer storytelling power-and breathtaking pace- Clark is without peer.” – People

“ Clark is a flawless storyteller…” – Washington Post Book World

“Mary Higgins Clark has become the grande dame of American thriller writing…” – Los Angeles Times Book Review

“No one knows better than Mary Higgins Clark how to turn fear into great entertainment. To mystery fans, she is a true national treasure.” – Associated Press

“There’s no denying Mary Higgins Clark’s formidable storytelling powers…” – The New York Times Book Review

“Mary Higgins Clark, like Alfred Hitchcock before her, stakes out a claim to a kind of fear that is absolutely terrifying because it bubbles under the surface of ordinary lives.” – Cosmopolitan

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Talented Erich Krueger seemed like the answer to Jenny's prayers, but after their marriage, she began to notice his obsession with his dead mother, and his possessiveness. Stumbling across old family secrets about a string of deaths, Jenny fears for herself and her children.

**In the latest thrilling collaboration from #1 *New York Times* bestselling author and "Queen of Suspense" Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke, television producer Laurie Moran must solve the kidnapping of her fiancee's nephew--just days before her wedding. ** Television producer Laurie Moran and her fiancee, Alex Buckley, the former host of her investigative television show, are just days away from their mid-August wedding, when things take a dark turn. Alex's seven-year-old nephew, Johnny, vanishes from the beach. A search party begins and witnesses recall Johnny playing in the water and collecting shells behind the beach shack, but no one remembers seeing him after the morning. As the sun sets, Johnny's skim board washes up to shore, and everyone realizes that he could be anywhere, even under water. A ticking clock, a sinister stalker, and fresh romance combine in this exhilarating follow up to the bestselling *You Don't Own...

Nancy Harmon had fled the heartbreak of her first marriage, the macabre deaths of her two little children, the hostile front-page newspaper stories and the shocking charges against her. She changed her name, dyed her red hair sable brown, and left California for the wind-swept peace of Cape Cod. Now she was married again, had two more beautiful children, and the terrible pain had begun to heal…until the morning when she looked in the back yard for her little boy and girl, found only one red mitten, and knew that the nightmare was beginning again…

The definition of an owl had always pleased him: a night bird of prey…sharp talons and soft plumage which permits noiseless flight…applied figuratively to a person of nocturnal habits. 'I am The Owl', he would whisper to himself after he had selected his prey, 'and nighttime is my time.'"

Jean Sheridan, a college dean and prominent historian, sets out to her hometown to attend the twenty-year reunion of Stonecroft Academy alumni, where she is to be honored along with six other members of her class. There is something uneasy in the air: one woman in the group about to be feted, Alison Kendall, a beautiful, high-powered Hollywood agent, drowned in her pool during an early-morning swim. Alison is the fifth woman in the class whose life has come to a sudden, mysterious end.

Adding to Jean's sense of unease is a taunting, anonymous fax she received, referring to her daughter – a child she had given up for adoption twenty years ago.

At the award dinner, Jean is introduced to Sam Deegan, a detective obsessed by the unsolved murder of a young woman who may hold the key to the identity of the Stonecroft killer. Jean does not suspect that among the distinguished people she is greeting is The Owl, a murderer nearing the countdown on his mission of vengeance against the Stonecroft women who had mocked and humiliated him, with Jean as his final victim.

From The Washington Post

As pointed out in Book World's May 2 Summer Forecast, readers hardly need to be reminded that Mary Higgins Clark's latest spring offering is here. Nighttime Is My Time brings to 29 the number of novels to bear her name, novels that have routinely graced bestseller lists and earned her numerous awards and the title Queen of Suspense. It is equally significant that Clark, an icon in the mystery field, has been generous with her time and attention to numerous younger writers, as evidenced by an award she and her publisher have sponsored since 2001 to recognize new talented authors, including Barbara D'Amato, Judith Kelman, Rose Conners and M.K. Preston, who follow the vein of suspense Clark has so expertly mined.

In a recent interview, Clark attributed her popularity to readers' ability to "walk in the shoes of the character." In the guidelines for eligibility to win the award that bears her name, Clark spells out the makings of a good suspense novel: "A very nice young woman, 27-38 or so, whose life is suddenly invaded. She is not looking for trouble – she is doing exactly what she should be doing. She solves her problem by her own courage and intelligence. She's in an interesting job. She's self-made – independent – has primarily good family relationships. No on-scene violence. No four-letter words or explicit sex scenes."

Nighttime Is My Time hews to this formula by creating an admirable protagonist, Jean Sheridan, a historian and author of a well-received book on Abigail Adams, then adds other elements to which virtually every reader can relate. Jean is returning to her hometown to be honored at the 20-year reunion of her class at Stonecroft Academy, a private school in upstate New York. But one of the six other honorees won't be attending the festivities. Hollywood agent Alison Kendall has been murdered in the book's opening pages by a man who had the resources to travel repeatedly to Los Angeles to stalk her before he drowned her in her own swimming pool.

Alison's death strikes Jean hard. The two had been friends and part of a group of girls known for lunching together, their good looks and their cruelty to boys in the school. Typical high school behavior perhaps, but, like the boys of Columbine, Alison's killer has nursed a grudge over how the girls taunted him, most specifically for taking advantage of his stage fright when he played an owl in a school play. This murderer's vengeance, planned and implemented over two decades, calls for killing each lunch-table girl, and other unrelated women, and leaving no "signature" to alert law enforcement, save the little pewter owls he places undetected near their bodies, a "silent reminder of his visit, a calling card that everybody always missed." And although he readily admits to himself that Jean was the only girl who was kind to him, in fact had enough family problems of her own to have been ridiculed herself, our serial killer (who calls himself, unsurprisingly, The Owl) has decided she too must die.

A reunion saddened by the tragic loss of a friend, a loss readers know is murder; the resourceful, successful heroine who has risen to the heights of her profession but must struggle to save herself and her daughter from the killer; the disappearance of actress Laura Wilcox, another honoree, before the reunion is over; a stalking serial killer who sits among the unsuspecting as a classmate and friend – Clark enlists these and other trademark devices to ratchet up the empathy and suspense.

While her fans may be delighted as the red herrings and misdirections pile up in chapters so short that their white space consumes a hefty percentage of the novel's pages, for this reader so much exposure to the killer's habits, thoughts and actions undermines the novel's plausibility. While he may call himself The Owl and wear a frightening feathered headdress, it's unlikely that the kidnapped Laura wouldn't allow herself to say his name, even to herself, regardless of his admonitions not to speak it aloud. Implausible, too, is Sam Deegan, an about-to-retire veteran investigator in the D.A.'s office, whose inability to link past and present crimes is troubling. So is his tendency to share information with suspects and people unassociated with the case, including a nosy reporter for the high school paper whose sole purpose seems to be to move the plot along when the action gets sluggish.

Clark 's successful contributions to the genre clearly indicate that she knows, and has done, better work. And while diehard fans may not object as Nighttime Is My Time wends it way to its inexorable conclusion, others who wish for more sizzle in their suspense or more spine-tingling entertainments may want to wait for Clark's next novel or try D'Amato, Kelman or the others whom she has so graciously encouraged.

Maggie Holloway is unsatisfied with the explanation for her former stepmother's death, and when the residents of a nursing home begin dying suddenly and inexplicably she becomes suspicious. It is only later that she realizes she herself is a target for a twisted killer.

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, depraived, 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.

Elizabeth Lange is haunted by the loss of her sister, Leila, who died mysteriously. Invited to Cypress Point Spa by a friend, she finds herself confronted by a cast of characters who all had motives for the killing. And she quickly discovers her own life may also be under threat.

Erin and Darcy, answering personal ads as research for a TV show, discover a New York subculture of adulterers, con-men, the shy and the weird – all looking for love. And one man looking for something darker – a serial killer who has survived for 15 years, and has promised himself two more murders.

From Publishers Weekly

The latest from the Clark suspense factory has a spunky New Jersey prosecutor, Kerry McGrath, as its heroine in danger. Kerry has taken an interest in a 10-year-old murder case, in which Skip Reardon had been found guilty of slaying his beautiful wife, Suzanne, and has since been pleading his innocence from his jail cell. When Kerry's small daughter, Robin, goes to a New York plastic surgeon after a car crash, it is apparent that Dr. Smith, who was Suzanne's father, is weird. He seems to be fashioning the faces of young women to resemble his dead daughter?and it was his testimony that sent Skip to jail. Kerry's interest in the case (and her parallel interest in Skip's good-guy lawyer) may harm her chances of a judgeship, and it also draws the ominous attention of another possible suspect, James Weeks, a wealthy real-estate magnate with rumored mob connections. Then there's elegant, tasteful art burglar Jason Arnott, who had also known Suzanne… As usual, Clark 's plot, unfolded in dozens of short chapters, is convoluted, full of red herrings and finally wrapped up with a villain out of left field. The writing is crisp but colorless, characterization minimal, atmosphere nonexistent; but the cozy evocation of a deserving damsel in distress who attains a happy ending seems never to disappoint her legions of fans.

A classic Christmas tale from the bestselling Queen of Suspense At the heart of the novel are two of Mary Higgins Clark's most loved characters: Alvirah, the lottery winner turned amateur sleuth, and her husband, Willy, who are caught up in a Christmas mystery that calls on all of their skills and experience. Willy has been looking forward to playing Santa at the after-school centre recently set up to care for the children of working parents on New York's Upper West Side, and Alvirah has been busy with rehearsals for the Christmas pageant. But suddenly a shadow falls upon the Christmas cheer. The centre is threatened with closure, a substitute promised for the play is mysteriously withdrawn, a valuable chalice is stolen from a neighborhood church, and a desperate young woman turns up, begging for Alvirah's help in finding the baby she abandoned seven years earlier. In a final blow, the young girl who is to play Mary in the Christmas pageant disappears… A missing child. A stolen chalice. A desperate mother. Can Alvirah reach the truth in time for Christmas?

A Christmas suspense story. When a young mother from Kansas travels to New York to be with her seriously ill husband at Christmas, her young son sees another woman steal his mother's wallet, and follows the thief into the subway. Thus begins a journey that will change all of their lives.

It has been ten years since 21-year-old Kevin MacKenzie, Jr. ("Mac"), has been missing. A Columbia University senior, about to graduate and already enrolled in Duke University Law School, he walked out of his room in Manhattan 's Upper West Side without a word to his college roommate and has never been seen again. However, he does make three ritual phone calls to his mother every year: on her birthday, on his birthday, and on Mother's Day. Each time, he assures her he is fine, refuses to answer her frantic questions, then hangs up. Even the death of his father, a corporate lawyer, on 9/11 does not bring him home, or break the pattern of his calls.

Mac's sister Carolyn is now 26, a law school graduate, and has just been hired as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan. She has endured two family tragedies-her brother's inexplicable disappearance, and the loss of her father. Realizing that neither she nor her mother will ever be able to have closure and get on with their lives until they find her brother, she sets out to discover what happened to Mac, and why he has found it necessary to hide from them.

Her journey into the world of people who willingly disappear from their own lives leads her to learn about others who may or may not still be alive, and ultimately to a deadly confrontation with someone close to her who suddenly becomes an enemy-and cannot allow her to disclose his secret…