Suggested Reading

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Michael Curry's favorite novel, he always carries a copy when he travels, rereads it for comfort and a visit with an old friend and named his contractor company after the novel. Like Pip, Michael is from a very poor background but gets an opportunity to move away from his impoverished beginnings and build his own future while acquiring his own wealth. This combination of proletariat and bourgeoisie leads Michael to refer to himself as a "high prole".

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

The central character in this novel and its 1941 film adaptation is, for Michael, Manderley, the house itself. One of Michael's "house" movies, the book centers around a young woman who marries the mysterious Maxim de Winter, a recluse whose first wife, Rebecca, died under mysterious circumstances and whose housekeeper keeps Rebecca's bedroom suite as a shrine to her former mistress and does not accept the eternally unnamed second wife as Rebecca's replacement. The elegance and refinement of the house itself is the draw for Michael, and it becomes one of many book and film related prototypes for the houses he builds his career restoring. It is also an early reference to his fascination with and future restoration of the First Street house in New Orleans.

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

If you are interested in a brief history of the New England Vampire Panic and a vampire fiction series set in Rhode Island, click the link to go to this page of the Parlor:

The Dracula Tape

A Coldness in the Blood

An Old Friend of the Family

Dominion

A Matter of Taste

A Sharpness on the Neck

The Holmes-Dracula File

Thorn

A Question of Time

Seance for a Vampire

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Vampire Series Fiction

The Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer:

Twilight

New Moon

Eclipse

Breaking Dawn

The Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris:

Dead Until Dark

Living Dead in Dallas

Club Dead

Dead to the World

Definitely Dead

Dead as a Doornail

All Together Dead (Set in New Orleans)

From Dead to Worse

Dead and Gone

Dead in the Family

Dead Reckoning

Deadlocked

Dead Ever After (Last in Series)

Charlaine Harris also has other series books out including Lily Bard, Harper Connelly and Aurora Teagarden.

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Krewe of Hunters

Heather Graham, a popular romance novelist, also has written some excellent novels about ghosts (my real favorite) and the people who can see them. Included are titles she wrote that concern vampires. I've noted the books set in New Orleans and in Louisiana:

Haunted

Ghost Walk (Set in New Orleans)

The Vision

The Seance

The Dead Room

The Death Dealer

The Presence

Kiss of Darkness

Phantom Evil (Set in New Orleans)

Heart of Evil (Set in Louisiana)

Sacred Evil

The Evil Inside

Night of the Vampires

Ghost Shadow

Ghost Night

Ghost Moon

Nightwalker

Night of the Wolves

Unhallowed Ground

Dust to Dust

Deadly Gift

Deadly Harvest

Deadly Night (Set in Louisiana)

Blood Red (Set in New Orleans)

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V.C. Andrews

When the novel Flowers In the Attic was first published in 1979, the publisher reportedly decided to give the author's name as V.C. Andrews for a rather curious reason. They didn't think that if the author's actual name was used, Cleo Virginia Andrews, readers would believe a woman could have written such a book! The novel was later adapted into the 1987 film starring Kristy Swanson as Cathy, Victoria Tennant as Corinne and Louise Fletcher as the Grandmother. V.C. Andrews has a brief cameo in the film as one of the Foxworth Hall maids washing a window.

Sadly, V.C. Andrews passed away in 1986, before the film's release. By the time of her passing, the only novel in the Dollanganger series yet to be published was Garden of Shadows. This novel, a prequel to Flowers In the Attic, was published in 1987. Like the other series (mostly) published in V.C. Andrews' lifetime, the prequel set the pattern of series novels that continued to be published by V.C. Andrews' estate long after her death. In recent years, Garden of Shadows was also adapted to the small screen under the name Flowers In the Attic: The Origin. In the adaptation, Harry Hamlin played Mr. Winfield, the father of Olivia (the Grandmother).

When I was a young teenager, these novels by V.C. Andrews were very popular, and seemed to be the series novels that transitioned many young readers from series' like Sweet Valley High to more serious, darker novels. At the time, additional series with the name "V.C. Andrews" on them that began well after Andrews' death were said to have been based upon notes and files Andrews herself had kept while planning new novels. To put these in novel format, her estate hired ghost writers to complete novels that she'd begun but had not been able to complete before her death and to put her remaining material into novels as she'd intended.

The first series published under the name V.C. Andrews after her death and in their entirety was the Cutler series. The first of the series was Dawn, published in the fall of 1990. It followed the format established by Andrews' Dollanganger series, meaning its prequel, the fifth and final novel in the series, Darkest Hour, was not published until 1993. Less than one year later, a new series under the name V.C. Andrews appeared: the Landry series.

Whether or not V.C. Andrews herself created the characters or their stories in the Landry series, it would not have been completely unimaginable that eventually, she might have decided on New Orleans and the bayous of Louisiana as a setting. The Dollanganger series was mostly set in Virginia and South Carolina; the Casteel series in West Virginia and Boston; the Cutler series in Virginia. Even if the Foxworths of Virginia made their fortune as industrialists by the time of the events of the novels, a centuries old estate in Virginia still might have begun as a plantation. A series with a main character who grew up in a rural, impoverished region of Appalachia with an as yet unknown family pedigree from a completely different region like Boston could certainly serve as a blueprint for a series with the same basic plot points transplanted to Louisiana.

The five Landry novels published between late 1993/early 1994 and early 1996, with prequel last, are:

Ruby – V.C. Andrews

Pearl in the Mist – V.C. Andrews

All That Glitters – V.C. Andrews

Hidden Jewel – V.C. Andrews

Tarnished Gold – V.C. Andrews

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Louisiana Romance

If you're interested in romance set in New Orleans, whether historical or contemporary, here is a list of novels I've read over the years and have in my collection that are set there (yes, I know, some of the titles are cheesy):

Wild Magnolia – Wanda Owen

Louisiana Lovesong – Wanda Owen

Louisiana Caress – Terri Valentine

New Orleans – Sara Orwig

New Orleans Legacy – Alexandra Ripley

Louisiana Dawn – Jennifer Blake

French Silk – Sandra Brown

Storyville – Lois Battle

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