The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark

A New York Times–bestselling author presents the definitive biography of a Jazz Age socialite who spent her final years hiding out in hospitals."A strange and fascinating twist on the American Dream. . . . Meryl Gordon delivers quite a page-turner for this true-life mystery." ―USA TodayBorn in 1906, Huguette Clark grew up in her family's 121-room Beaux Arts mansion in New York and was one of the leading celebrities of her day, having attended the coronation of King George V. Her father William Andrews Clark, was a copper magnate, the second richest man in America, and not above bribing his way into the Senate.At twenty-two with a personal fortune of $50 million to her name, Huguette married a Princeton man and childhood friend William MacDonald Gower. Two-years later the couple divorced. After a series of failed romances, she began to withdraw from society—first living with her mother in a kind of Grey Gardens isolation, then as a modern-day Miss Havisham, spending her days in a vast apartment overlooking Central Park, eating crackers and watching The Flintstones with only servants for company.All her money and all her real estate could not protect her in her later life from being manipulated by shady hangers-on and hospitals that were only too happy to admit (and bill) a healthy woman. But what happened to Huguette that turned a vivacious, young socialite into a recluse? And what was her life like inside that gilded, copper cage? Read more