Flowers in the Attic

After their father's sudden death leaves the family without money, young Cathy and Chris Dollanganger learn their mother was disowned by her own wealthy father for marrying the man she loved, and that reconciling, and reclaiming her inheritance before he dies, means hiding her four children from him entirely. Corrine promises the confinement in an upstairs room, and the attic beyond it, will last only days while she works her way back into her father's good graces. Her mother's ice-cold terms for keeping the secret, and how long a few days quietly stretches into, are another matter. Opens V. C. Andrews's Dollanganger series.