Virginia Andrews lived in Norfolk, Virginia, studied art and worked as a fashion illustrator, commercial artist and portrait painter. Flowers in the Attic, based on a true story, was her first novel. It became an immediate bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic when it was first published in 1979. Virginia Andrews died in 1986, leaving a considerable amount of unpublished work.

‘An artfully twisted modern fairytale’The Times Magazine‘Beautifully written, macabre and thoroughly nasty… it is evocative of the nasty fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood and The Babes in the Wood, with a bit of Victorian Gothic thrown in. … What does shine through is her ability to see the world through a child’s eyes’Daily Express‘Makes horror irresistible’Glasgow Sunday Mail‘A gruesome saga… the storyline is compelling, many millions have no wish to put this down’Ms London‘There is strength in her books – the bizarre plots matched with the pathos of the entrapped’The Times