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{ novels ~ the dollanganger series, 1979-1987 }



Book One:
Flowers in the Attic (1979)

from back cover:
   Such Wonderful Children. Such a beautiful mother. Such a lovely house. Such endless terror!
   It wasn't that she didn't love her children. She did. But there was a fortune at stake-a fortune that could assure their later happiness if she could keep the children a secret from her dying father. So her mother and her 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....


Book Two:
Petals on the Wind (1980)

from back cover:
   They Were Such Brave Children To Withstand Such Suffering. Such Clever Children To Escape Such Terror!
   For Carrie, Chris, and Cathy the attic was a dark horror that would never leave their minds, even while they built bright, promising new lives. Of course mother had to pretend they didn't exist. And grandmother was convinced they had the devil in them. But that wasn't their fault. Was it? Cathy knew what to do. She now had the powers she had learned from her beautiful mother. She knew it in the way her brother still yearned for her, in the way her gaurdian touched her, in the way all men looked at her. She knew it was time to put what she knew to the test. To show her mother and her grandmother that the pain and terror of the attic could not be forgotten...Show them. Show them-once and for all.


Book Three:
If There Be Thorns (1981)

from back cover:
   Out of the Ashes of Evil Chris and Cathy Made Such a Loving Home for Their Splendid Children...
   Fourten-year-old Jory was so handsome, so gentle. And Bart had such a dazzling imagination for a nine year old. Then the lights came on in the abandoned house next door. And soon the Old Lady in Black was watching their house with prying eyes, gaurded by her strange old butler. Soon the shrouded woman had Bart over for cookies and ice cream and asked him to call her "Grandmother." And soon Bart's transformation began... A transformation that sprang from the "book of secrets" the gaunt old butler had given him...a transformation fed by the hint of terrible things about his mother and father...a transformation that led him into shocking acts of violence, self-destruction and perversity. And now while this little boy trembles on the edge of madness, his anguished parents, his helpless brother, an obsessed old woman and a vengeful, powerful butler await the climax to a horror that flowered in an attic long ago, a horror whose thorns are still wet with blood, still tipped with fire...


Book Four:
Seeds of Yesterday (1984)

from back cover:
   Cathy and Chris, Entwined With The Evil That Haunts Their Children, Awaiting The Shuddering Climax-Prisoners of a Past They Cannot Escape...
   Cathy and Chris are now in their fifties, and they finally seem to have put the past behind them. Bart has just recieved his law degree, and Jory has a prestigious career as a ballet dancer. Now Foxworth Hall has been rebuilt and Bart will inherit it when he turns twenty-five. But no one is prepared for the suprised return of a presumed-dead relative! Joel Foxworth, Corrine's brother, was lost in the Swiss Alps over sixty years ago, and everyone presumed he had perished. Now he has turned up out of no where, and Cathy and Chris are going to find out even more bizarre things about their family than they ever knew. Before long there is a terrible tragedy and they have to live in Foxworth Hall.


Book Five:
Garden of Shadows (1987)

from back cover:
   Olivia dreamed of a sun-filled love, a happy life. Then she entered Foxworth Hall...
   Long before terror flowered in an attic, thin, spinsterish Olivia came to Virginia as Malcolm Foxworth's bride. At last, with her tall handsome husband, she would find the joy she had been waiting for, longed for. But in the gloomy mansion filled with hidden rooms and festering desires, a stain of jealous obsession begins to spread...an evil that will threaten her children, two lovely boys and one very special little girl. For within one innocent child, a shocking secret lives...a secret that will taint the proud Foxworth name, and haunt all their lives forever!



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