When Mary Higgins Clark began submitting manuscripts...

When Mary Higgins Clark began submitting manuscripts for publication, the results were hardly encouraging. “Your stories are light, slight and trite,” said one rejection slip.

But Clark went on to write novels that have sold more than 15 million copies, starting with “Where Are the Children?” in 1975.

She will be at the Pasadena Central Library, 285 E. Walnut St., on Tuesday, as the sixth and final speaker in the library’s 1991 Author Series. Her talk begins at 7:30 p.m.

Clark, 59, who was born in New York City, was left with five children to rear when her husband, an airline executive, died of a heart attack in 1964. She became a radio scriptwriter, wrote a little-noticed biography of George Washington and then began a string of successful suspense novels.

Critics have called her a master storyteller whose technique is to build taut suspense in a limited time frame, putting ordinary people in frightening situations.

In a magazine interview, Clark described her work this way: “I like to write about very nice people who are confronted by the forces of evil and who, through their own intelligence, work their way through to deliverance.”

Tickets for Clark’s appearance are $7.50. They will be available at the library’s circulation desk, starting Monday.