Summary
"I will probably be clutching Flowers in the Attic in my gnarled hands on my deathbed." --GILLIAN FLYNN, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sharp Objects
The twisted, beloved Dollanganger legend began two generations before Corrine Foxworth locked away her children in Flowers in the Attic . The second book in a new prequel story arc, Out of the Attic explores the Dollanganger family saga by traveling back decades to when the clan's wicked destiny first took root.
Married to the handsome, wealthy Garland Foxworth following a wildfire romance, and an unexpected pregnancy, young Corrine Dixon finds her life very different from how she imagined it. Often alone in the mansion of Foxworth Hall, she can practically feel the ancestors' judgment of her as insufficient--as not a Foxworth . Stern portraits glare at her from the walls, and the servants treat her strangely. Nothing in the vast place is truly hers.
Even her son, Malcolm Foxworth, born in the luxe Swan Room and instantly whisked away to a wet nurse, feels alien to her. With a husband alternately absent and possessively close, Corrine doesn't yet realize that she's barely scratched the surface of what lies beneath Foxworth Hall's dark facade and the family that guards its legacies.
With the fortieth anniversary celebration of Flowers in the Attic , and ten new Lifetime movies in the past five years, there has never been a better time to experience the forbidden world of V.C. Andrews.
Born on June 6, 1924 in Portsmouth, Va., Virginia Cleo ("V. C.") Andrews was one of three children of William Henry and Lillian Lilnora. Andrews worked as a commercial fashion and portrait artist for a time. However, after her father's death in the late 1960s and the family's subsequent move to Manchester, Mo, she began what she described as "closet" writing. It was her publisher's decision to use the initials V. C. rather than her full name. This was done for the purpose of neutralizing her gender so as to sell to adult male audiences; the common belief was that men did not like to read books by women writers.
Andrews eventually became a full-time writer. Her first novel was a science fiction fantasy entitled The Gods of the Green Mountains, published in 1972. In 1980, she published the bestseller Flowers in the Attic, followed by Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and Garden of Shadows; all of which comprise the Dollanganger Series.
Andrews died of breast cancer on December 19, 1986, in Virginia Beach, Virginia. After her death, her family hired a ghost writer, 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. She left a legacy of books that have been sold worldwide and translated into 13 foreign languages.
(Bowker Author Biography)