Take a deep breath and grab your digital reader, because Flowers in the Attic is $1.99 digitally. It's amazing how this book was the gateway drug to romance for so many people because it's decidedly NOT a ROMANCE. (Also, that COVER, When you know the story, that cover is JAW DROPPING.) Either way, it's $1.99, so if you'd like to re-live the Flowers in the Attic experience, enjoy!
It wasn't that she didn't love her children. She did. But there was a fortune at stake–a fortune that would assure their later happiness if she could keep the children a secret from her dying father.
So she and her mother hid her darlings away in an unused attic. Just for a little while. But the brutal days swelled into agonizing years.
Now Cathy, Chris, and the twins wait in their cramped and helpless world, stirred by adult dreams, adult desires, served a meager sustenance by an angry, superstitious grandmother who knows that the Devil works in dark and devious ways.
Sometimes he sends children to do his work–children who–one by one–must be destroyed….
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The Revolution was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers, and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever is $3.99 at Amazon for a limited time. This is a nonfiction analysis of the way characters like Tony Soprano and Buffy changed television – with behind-the-scenes stuff and interviews and all kinds of brain candy. I've heard about this book from so many different people, from the folks at Pop Culture Happy Hour to one of Hubby's friends on Facebook, and at $3.99, it's worth grabbing. I'm sure your brain will really enjoy it!
A mob boss in therapy. An experimental, violent prison unit. The death of an American city, as seen through a complex police investigation. A lawless frontier town trying to talk its way into the United States. A corrupt cop who rules his precinct like a warlord. The survivors of a plane crash trying to make sense of their disturbing new island home. A high school girl by day, monster fighter by night. A spy who never sleeps. A space odyssey inspired by 9/11. An embattled high school football coach. A polished ad exec with a secret. A chemistry teacher turned drug lord.
These are the subjects of 12 shows that started a revolution in TV drama: The Sopranos. Oz. The Wire. Deadwood. The Shield. Lost. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 24. Battlestar Galactica. Friday Night Lights. Mad Men. Breaking Bad. These 12 shows, and the many more they made possible, ushered in a new golden age of television — one that made people take the medium more seriously than ever before.
Alan Sepinwall became a TV critic right before this creative revolution began, was there to chronicle this incredible moment in pop culture history, and along the way “changed the nature of television criticism,” according to Slate. The Revolution Was Televised is the story of these 12 shows, as told by Sepinwall and the people who made them, including David Chase, David Simon, David Milch, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, Vince Gilligan and more.
The Chocolate Thief, book 1 in Laura Florand's contemporary romance series set in Paris, is $1.99 at Amazon to promote the release of her third title, The Chocolate Touch.
Breathtakingly beautiful, the City of Light seduces the senses, its cobbled streets thrumming with possibility. For American Cade Corey, it's a dream come true, if only she can get one infuriating French chocolatier to sign on the dotted line. . .
Chocolate
Melting, yielding yet firm, exotic, its secrets are intimately known to Sylvain Marquis. But turn them over to a brash American waving a fistful of dollars? Jamais. Not unless there's something much more delectable on the table. . .
After yesterday's TWO (yes two!) A-grade reviews of Courtney Milan's The Heiress Effect, I was asked which Courtney Milan title would be best to start with. I found this collection of four novellas for $2.99, and while that's not a sale price, I wanted to make sure you saw it, in case you were curious about Milan's writing.
The Governess Affair: Three months ago, governess Serena Barton was sacked. Now she's demanding compensation from the man responsible: a petty, selfish duke. But it's not the duke she fears. Hugo Marshall handles all the duke's dirty business, and he's been ordered to get rid of her by fair means or foul. If only he didn't find her so compelling… (SB grade: B+)
A Kiss for Midwinter: Miss Lydia Charingford is always cheerful, and never more so than at Christmas time. Still, no matter how hard she smiles, she can't forget the dark secret that nearly ruined her life. But someone else knows the truth of those dark days: the sarcastic Doctor Jonas Grantham. She wants nothing to do with him…or the butterflies that take flight in her stomach every time he looks her way… (SB Grade: A-)
What Happened at Midnight: Fleeing the consequences of her father's embezzlement, Mary Chartley takes a position as a lady's companion, only to find herself a virtual prisoner at Doyle's Grange, her employer's house. And then the nightmare truly begins: the man she loves, who also happens to be the man from whom her father stole, shows up at her door seeking recompense. And she has no way to pay him…
The Lady Always Wins: Railway financier Simon Davenant has waited seven years for a second chance with Virginia Croswell, his childhood sweetheart and best friend. He's not about to let his impending financial ruin destroy the opportunity. This time, he'll do anything he can to secure her hand in marriage–even if it means losing her heart for good.
Now I’m wondering about all the other creepy book covers we could remake with a New Adult/Young Adult filter.
ETA: Stacked, the librarian blog, has been trying to figure out where this cover comes from. THEY SUSPECT CANADA.
http://bit.ly/143Qhab
Flowers in the Attic seriously traumatised me when I read it as an impressionable youth. Ugh. I think that was my first experience of really, really not liking a book that everyone else seemed to love.
That tv book looks fascinating – it could be good commuting reading.
I too read a V. C. Andrews book at an impressionable age. It was… mind-expanding, if not very pleasant. I don’t remember the title, but it was the one where the main character grows up in a shack in the backwoods, and (among many other terrors) her father infects her mother with a venereal disease leading to a stillborn baby with only half a head, but the thing that shocks everyone the most is the baby has no boy/girl parts.
Has anyone looked into the books they’re putting out under the “V. C. Andrews” brandname nowadays? I bet they’re tame. There was a cultural moment that she fitted, and it has passed.
@Vasha
Exactly. It’s hard for me to believe that anyone reads her work anymore, or that it resonates with people.
And omg does that book you describe sound bad.
Whenever someone talked about how Twilight was going to destroy the youth of the world, I always laughed. We had Flowers in the Attic. We win.
What the actual f&$k is up with that cover, so so wrong.
I must remember to ask my mother if she had any idea what her young and innocent daughter was reading when she saw me reading this. Ugh,every time I see the name vc andrews I shudder.
On a brighter note the book about tv looks interesting.
I highly recommend The Revolution Was Televised. It’s really good and informative, and Sepinwall has a laid-back, easy-to-read writing style.
Also, just reading the chapter on Friday Night Lights made me tear up in remembrance of why that show is so great.
Yep, that is a creepypants cover. A friend told me recently that there is a tearoom in Pittsburgh named “Flowers in the Attic.” WHICH IS A TERRIBLE IDEA OK.
never76: the number of times you should never name a tearoom thusly.
@Vasha
I’m pretty sure that’s from the first Heaven book. That’s the VC Andrews series I remember from back when I read a bunch of them that was the most eff-ed up.
What Jo said. Seeing the author’s name here did not give me a warm fuzzy feeling.
The Revolution was Televised is no longer sale price. Just a head’s up. It looks good but too spendy for right now.
And, yes, that cover for Flowers in the Attic!
That cover grosses me out!
@Miranda – Hah! Flowers in the Attic is my go to example whenever anyone worries about today’s youth being ruined by whatever current dreadful book is being discussed. If I can survive reading FitA (and Jackie Collins and Judith Krantz) at a very impressionable age, I think my youngest cousin will probably survive reading Twilight (so far, she shows no signs of pining for sparkly yet creepy stalkers).
I never read any of VC Andrews books despite their popularity. I knew they had a creepy factor and I am too easily frightened and don’t enjoy it. Based on the comments here, I’m happy to not have spent my time on her books (or Twilight). Instead I was reading Marion Chesney and Elizabeth Peters. Good times!
I can only assume that whoever designed that Flowers in the Attic cover sat back when she was finished and laughed for like fifteen minutes straight. That cover makes it look almost wholesome.
A good friend of mine who is a high school librarian had never heard of Flowers in the Attic (why it wasn’t mentioned in her library school classes, I’ll never know). So I explained the whole plot to her while she looked at this cover. There was a lot of gasping in horror.
The cover looks like it is meant to appeal to the whole Sarah Dessen crowd. I wonder if the powers that be are trying to build up the Flowers in the Attic fan base again before the Lifetime movie comes out.
I remember reading Flowers in the Attic in English class as part of the curriculum. There was a lot of WTF between my fellow students afterwards. I think we were all scarred for life.
I read My Sweet Audrina by V.C. Andrews in high school (three years ago) and loved it—no idea why…and I can still remember the librarian’s look of horror when she saw what I was reading.
I *almost* want to read Flowers in the Attic just to see how good/bad it is. Almost.
Don’t read ANY V.C. Andrews. It makes the Game of Thrones incest sound tame.
I know I shouldn’t buy FitA, I know the story, I remember how f’ed up the movie was but I couldn’t stop myself from buying it.
I never read the Flowers in the Attic series, but I just read the plot summaries for it on Wikipedia. Holy hell, that is some seriously flarked up stuff!