Born Virginia Cleo Andrews in Portsmouth, Virginia, the third child and first daughter to William Henry, a tool and dye maker, and Lillian Lilnora Parker, a telephone operator. "I was brought up in a working-class environment, with a father who loved...

V. C. Andrews is far more than an author of popular gothic suspense novels; she has become a publishing industry. With her fabulously popular novel, Flowers in the Attic, and its sequels, Andrews established a mini-genre of...