Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

This weeks prompt could be anything to do with flowers so I’ve chosen to list books with flowers in the title.

1. Purple Hibiscus – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2003) – An excellent story about the difficulties of growing up when your country is in turmoil and your family life is equally difficult.
2. Flowers in the Attic – V. C. Andrews (1979) – A woman hides her children in the attic in order to gain an inheritance. I read this as a teenager (when everyone at school seemed to be reading it). I’m not sure what I’d think of it if I read it now.
3. The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky (1999) – A powerful coming of age story about trying to live your life when you don’t understand your impulses or the world around you.
4. The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco (1980) – A convoluted mystery set in a medieval monastery with a cast of strange monks to add to the creepiness.
5. The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy (1987) – A dark and disturbing story about the murder of a beautiful women in LA. This was my first Ellroy and one of the most enjoyable.
6. The Virgin’s Lover – Philippa Gregory (2004) – The romance between Elizabeth 1 and Robert Dudley portrayed like a Carry On film. Not one of my favourites.
7. All the Flowers in Shanghai – Duncan Jepson (2011) – An okay story set in 1930s Shanghai and showing the horrors of arranged marriages and the pressure to produce a male heir.
8. Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes (1966) – A thought experiment looking at the way we treat others based on how intelligent we perceive them to be. One of my favourite science fiction books.
9. Odour of Chrysanthemums – D. H. Lawrence – A short stories about a woman waiting for her husband to return from the mine, unaware that he was killed in an accident earlier that day.
10. The Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham (1951) – Okay more of a tree than a flower probably but nonetheless a well written look at the aftermath of a disaster.