V. C. Andrews

As of July 2022, Lifetime has aired 15 adaptations of V. C. Andrews' work.

Later in life, Andrews turned to writing. Her first novel, titled Gods of Green Mountain, was a science fiction effort that remained unpublished during her lifetime but was released as an e-book in 2004. In 1975, Andrews completed a manuscript for a novel she called Flowers in the Attic. "I wrote it in two weeks," Andrews said. The novel was returned with the suggestion that she "spice up" and expand the story. In later interviews, Andrews claims to have made the necessary revisions in a single night. The novel, published in 1979, was an instant popular success, reaching the top of the bestseller lists in only two weeks. Every year thereafter until her death, Andrews published a new novel, each publication earning Andrews larger advances and a growing popular readership.

The Wildflowers series is about a group of girls in court-ordered group therapy and why they were ordered to attend. The first four mini-books serve as prequels to the therapy sessions while the last one deals with what happened after. An omnibus edition was released in 2001 containing the four mini-books.

The Orphans series focuses on the lives of four teenage orphans, Janet (Butterfly), Crystal, Brooke, and Raven, who are sent to the Lakewood House foster home and their subsequent escape in the full-length conclusion, Runaways. Each of the first four mini-books focuses on the events that led each girl to the Lakewood House foster home. Released over the summer of 1998, The Orphans Series marked the first mini-series written under the Andrews name and the first departure from the usual series structure of the previous five series. An omnibus edition of the first four novels was released in 2000 and the original mini-books were subsequently taken out of print.

This series of novels focuses on the Landry family; Ruby Landry, her daughter Pearl, and Ruby's mother Gabrielle (referred to as Gabriel in Tarnished Gold). The novels, set in the Louisiana bayou, were published between 1994 and 1996.

Andrews died of breast cancer on December 19, 1986, in Virginia Beach, Virginia. After her death, her family hired a ghostwriter, Andrew Neiderman, to finish the manuscripts she had started. He would complete the next two novels, Garden of Shadows and Fallen Hearts, and they were published soon after. These two novels are considered the last to bear the "V. C. Andrews" name and to be almost completely written by Andrews herself.

"I think I tell a whopping good story. And I don't drift away from it a great deal into descriptive material," she stated in Faces of Fear in 1985. "When I read, if a book doesn't hold my interest in what's going to happen next, I put it down and don't finish it. So I'm not going to let anybody put one of my books down and not finish it. My stuff is a very fast read." In an interview for Twilight Magazine in 1983, Andrews was questioned about the critics' response to her work. She answered, "I don't care what the critics say. I used to, until I found out that most critics are would-be writers who are just jealous because I'm getting published and they aren't. I also don't think that anybody cares about what they say. Nor should they care."

Published between 1985 and 1990, the five novels of the Casteel series make up the last series started by Andrews before her death. This series traces the lives of a troubled West Virginia family, originally from the viewpoint of Heaven, a young impoverished girl whose mother died during childbirth and who has a love/hate relationship with her alcoholic father who eventually sells Heaven and her siblings to make some money. Eventually Heaven leaves to go live with her maternal grandfather at Farthinggale Manor where she discovers the secrets of her mother and who her actual father is. Later novels focus on Heaven's daughter, Annie, with the fifth and final novel centering on Leigh, Heaven's mother.

Andrews's novels combine Gothic horror and family saga, revolving around family secrets and forbidden love (frequently involving themes of horrific events, and sometimes including a rags-to-riches story). Her best-known novel is the bestseller Flowers in the Attic (1979), a tale of four children smuggled into the attic of their wealthy estranged pious grandmother, and held prisoner there by their mother.

Andrews' first series of novels was published between 1979 and 1987.

Initially a stand-alone novel published during Andrews' lifetime, the story takes place in the Mid-Atlantic United States during the 1960s and 1970s. The story features diverse subjects, such as brittle bone disease, rape, posttraumatic stress disorder, and diabetes, in the haunting setting of a Victorian-era mansion near the fictitious River Lyle. A sequel was published 34 years later, to tie in with the Lifetime adaption of My Sweet Audrina, by Andrew Neiderman.

Andrews was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, the youngest child and only daughter of Lillian Lilnora (Parker), a telephone operator, and William Henry Andrews, a tool-and-die maker. She had two older brothers, William Jr. and Eugene. Andrews grew up attending Southern Baptist and Methodist churches. As a teenager, Andrews suffered a fall from a school stairwell, resulting in severe back injuries. The subsequent surgery to correct these injuries resulted in Andrews' suffering from crippling arthritis that required her to use crutches and a wheelchair for much of her life. However, having always shown promise as an artist, she was able to complete a four-year correspondence course from her home and soon became a successful commercial artist, illustrator, and portrait painter, using her art commissions to support the family after her father's death in 1957.

Cleo Virginia Andrews (June 6, 1923 – December 19, 1986), better known as V. C. Andrews or Virginia C. Andrews, was an American novelist.