Former journalist Elizabeth Flock reported for Time and People magazines before becoming a television reporter and anchor in San Francisco, California. After moving to New York, Flock became an on-air correspondent for CBS News covering breaking news both in the United States and abroad. Notably, reporting from Havana, Cuba, for Pope John Paul II’s visit with Fidel Castro; reporting from London following the death of Princess Diana; and reporting from Hong Kong where she covered the handover from the British to the Chinese.
Flock’s acclaimed first novel, But Inside I’m Screaming, a fictionalized account of a journalist’s fight for sanity, was published by MIRA Books in 2003. Reviewers called the novel “riveting,” “insightful,” and, in the words of the Oakland Tribune, “hard to put down.” But Inside I’m Screaming has since been translated into seven languages and has sold nearly a quarter of a million copies.
In 2005, Flock’s second novel, Me & Emma (MIRA Books), spent six consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Called “a triumph” by bestselling author Kathleen DeMarco, Me & Emma has been compared to To Kill a Mockingbird, and was referred to as “haunting…not soon forgotten,” by Booklist. Kirkus Reviews wrote, “Flock captures [the main character’s] powerlessness and resourcefulness beautifully…tremendously touching.” Me & Emma was chosen as one of the “Best Books of 2005” by Booksense (now called Indiebound) and was a Highlight Pick of the Year. In addition to being a bestseller in the UK, Me & Emma has been published in 15 countries, translated into 10 languages and has approximately 500,000 copies worldwide.
Everything Must Go (MIRA Books, 2007), Flock’s third novel, is set in the Connecticut of her childhood. The Dallas Morning News wrote, “in Ms. Flock’s talented hands, [Henry] becomes someone readers will keep rooting for long after it would seem the game is over,” and Booklist wrote, “another strong characterization from Flock, who uncannily immerses herself in [the main character’s] vulnerable, yet stalwart, psyche.” On the show Sunday Papers, WGN-Radio’s Rick Kogan called the main character “one of the most interesting characters in contemporary fiction.”
In 2009, MIRA Books published Sleepwalking In Daylight, Flock’s novel about a stay-at-home mother struggling with a mid-life crisis while her teenaged daughter secretly descends into a dark world of drugs and disillusionment. “Sleepwalking in Daylight is a finely wrought heartbreaker of a novel,” wrote the Denver Post, “Flock writes in compulsively readable prose…shoot[ing] a quiver of arrows straight to the heart.”
In August, 2012, Random House debuts the much-anticipated follow-up to Me & Emma, called What Happened To My Sister. The story picks up the day its predecessor leaves off and follows young Carrie Parker and her mother as they drive away from the shards of their shattered lives to begin anew. While on the road, the two meet another mother-daughter pair, Honor and Cricket, and the two young girls become fast friends. Soon they discover a surprising secret and their lives are changed forever. “From the opening sentence of [this] exceptional new novel, I was at its tender mercies,” writes Elinor Lipman (New York Times bestselling author of The Inn At Lake Devine and Then She Found Me). “Heart-wrenching and funny in unexpected ways, beautifully told and so satisfying…these memorable, lovable characters jumped off the page and have lodged themselves in my heart.”
Elizabeth Flock lives in New York City.