V. C. Andrews

After her death in 1986, a ghostwriter who was initially hired to complete two unfinished works has continued to publish books under her name.

[2] Her novels have been translated into Czech, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Greek, Finnish, Hungarian, Swedish, Polish, Portuguese, Lithuanian, Chinese, Russian and Hebrew.

[4] 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.

Her first novel, written in 1972 and titled Gods of Green Mountain, was a science fiction effort that remained unpublished during her lifetime but was eventually released as an e-book in 2004.

Neiderman has revisited some of Andrews' original characters and settings, while also creating numerous new series that explore similar themes.

Flowers in the Attic and Petals on the Wind focus on the four Dollanganger siblings and the events that shattered their perfect life after a car accident kills their father and their eventual imprisonment in their grandparents' attic as their mother tries to win back the love of her dying estranged father who must not know of the existence of her four children.

Garden of Shadows, a prequel, tells the grandparents' story and how the children's parents became involved with each other, leading to the events of the first novel.

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 adaptation of My Sweet Audrina, by Andrew Neiderman.

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.

The series follows Melody Logan from a West Virginia trailer park to Cape Cod as she helps her relatives deal with the problems they'd rather bury.

The first two books, Willow and Wicked Forest, cover her meeting with her mother and half-brother in Palm Beach, Florida, her marriage which ends on a sour note, and the birth of her daughter Hannah, who is the main character in Twisted Roots.

The Broken Wings series follows three juvenile delinquents, Robin Taylor, Teal Sommers, and Phoebe Elder, who each act out for various reasons.

The Gemini series follows Celeste, a young girl who is forced to take on the identity of her dead twin brother Noble by her New Age fanatic mother.

The Shadows series is about a teenage girl named April Taylor, who is short, fat, not overly talented, nor popular.

Jordan March, unlike every other V. C. Andrews main character (all of whom are 12 or 16 years old), starts out at age 6, then turns 7.