Dollanganger series

All 5 titles:

GARDEN OF SHADOWS – the prequel

FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC – part 1

PETALS ON THE WIND – part 2

IF THERE BE THORNS – part 3

SEEDS OF YESTERDAY – part 4

Descriptions:

GARDEN OF SHADOWS

THE PREQUEL

Olivia dreamed of a sun-filled love, a happy life. Then she entered Foxworth Hall...

V.C. Andrews' thrilling new novel spins a tale of dreadful secrets and dark, forbidden passions--of the time before Flowers in the Attic began. Long before terror flowered in the attic, thin, spinsterish Olivia came to Virginia as Malcolm Foxworth's bride. At last, with her tall handsome husband, she would find the joy she has waited for, longed for. But in the gloomy mansion filled with hidden rooms and festering desires, a stain of jealous obsession begins to spread... an evil that will threaten her children, two lovely boys and one very special, beautiful girl. For within one innocent child, a shocking secret lives... a secret that will taint the proud Foxworth name, and haunt all their lives forever!

The wicked curse of the Dollanganger family begins in... Garden of Shadows

Good-bye to lonely nights... Good-bye to my world of fantasy and dreams...

Good-bye to my father's face of pity and to my own forlorn look in the mirror. A man, most handsome and elegant, had come calling and then had asked for my hand in marriage.

I hurried upstairs and sat before the dollhouse. I would live in a big house with servants. We would entertain with elaborate dinner parties. In time we would be envied by all.

Just like I have envied you," I said to the porcelain family within the dollhouse.

I was to become Olivia Foxworth, Mrs. Malcolm Neal Foxworth. My life would no longer be colored gray. No, from now on it would be blue--blue as the sun-filled skies of a cloudless day. Blue as Malcolm's eyes.

Like any woman stupidly believing in love, I never realized that the blue sky I saw was not the soft, nurturing sky of spring, but the cold, chilling, lonely sky of winter...

FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC

Book 1

Such wonderful children. Such a beautiful mother. Such a lovely house. Such endless terror!

It wasn't that she didn't love her children. She did. But there was a fortune at stake--a fortune that would assure their later happiness if she could keep the children a secret from her dying father.

So she and her mother hid her darlings away in an unused attic.

Just for a little while.

But the brutal days swelled into agonizing years. Now Cathy, Chris, and the twins wait in their cramped and helpless world, stirred by adult dreams, adult desires, served a meager sustenance by an angry, superstitious grandmother who knows that the Devil works in dark and devious ways. Sometimes he sends children to do his work--children who--one by one--must be destroyed....

'Way upstairs there are
       four secrets hidden.
         Blond, beautiful, innocent
           struggling to stay alive....

Righteous Anger... Innocent Fear...

Because the grandmother's wrath had not yet materialized, Chris and I had grown careless. We were not always modest in the bedroom. It was difficult to live, day in--day out, and always keep the intimate places of our bodies secret from the other sex.

And to be perfectly honest, none of us cared very much who saw what.

We should have cared.

We should have been careful.

We should have kept the memory of Momma's bloody welted back sharply before us, and never, never have forgotten.

A key turned in the door lock. Swiftly I tried to put the dress over my head and pull it down before she came in. But she had seen me naked; it was those glittering, gray stone eyes.

"So!" the grandmother spat, "I have caught you at last... Sinners! you think you look pretty? You think those new young curves are attractive? You like that long golden hair that you brush and curl?"

She smiled then.

The most frightening smile I ever saw..

PETALS ON THE WIND

Book 2

They were such brave children to withstand such suffering. Such clever children to escape such terror!

For Carrie, Chris and Cathy, the attic was a dark horror that would not leave their minds, even while they built bright, promising new lives. Of course mother had to pretend they didn't exist.

And grandmother was convinced they had the devil in them.

But that wasn't their fault. Was it? Cathy knew what to do.

She now had the powers she had learned from her beautiful mother. She knew it in the way her brother still yearned for her, in the way her guardian touched her, in the way all men looked at her.

She knew it was time to put what she knew to the test. To show her mother and grandmother that the pain and terror of the attic could not be forgotten... Show them.

Show them--once and for all.

White pearls... Black promise...

Though I'm not sure, I thought I saw a woman dressed in black--her head and face covered by a black veil--duck behind a tree as we approached the road and the park car. She was hiding, so we wouldn't see her. But I caught a glimpse--enough to reveal the rope of lustrous pearls she wore. Pearls that were there for a thin white hand to lift and nervously, out of long habit, twist and untwist into a knot.

Only one woman I knew did that--and she was the perfect one to wear black.

I'd see to it that all her remaining days on earth were black. Blacker than the tar put on my hair. Blacker than anything in that locked room. Blacker than anything the darkest shadows in the attic had given us when we were fearful, and young, and needed so much to be loved. Blacker than the deepest pit in hell.

I'd waited long enough to deliver what I must. Long enough. And even with Chris here to stop me... even he wouldn't be able to prevent what I had to do....

IF THERE BE THORNS

Book 3

Out of the ashes of evil Chris and Cathy made such a loving home for their splendid children...

Fourteen-year-old Jory was so handsome, so gentle. And Bart had such a dazzling imagination for a nine year old.

Then the lights came on in the abandoned house next door. Soon the Old Lady in Black was there, watching their home with prying eyes, guarded by her strange old butler. Soon the shrouded woman had Bart over for cookies and ice cream and asked him to call her "Grandmother."

And soon Bart's transformation began...

A transformation that sprang from "the book of secrets" the gaunt old bulter had given him... a transformation fed by the hint of terrible things about his mother and father... a transformation that led him into shocking acts of violence, self-destruction and perversity.

And now while this little boy trembles on the edge of madness, his anguished parents, his helpless brother, an obsessed old woman and the vengeful, powerful butler await the climax to a horror that flowered in an attic long ago, a horror whose thorns are still wet with blood, still tipped with fire....

"No, I wouldn't. I couldn't do that....

"You have to mean that!" he snapped. "No matter what happens, we will not, or you will not put your children in this attic to save yourself, or me.

"I hate you for thinking I would!"

"I am trying to be patient. I am trying to believe in you. I know you still have nightmares. I know you are still tormented by all that happened when we were young and innocent. But you have to grow up enough to look at yourself honestly. Haven't you learned yet that the subconscious often leads the way to reality?"

He strode back to cuddle her close, to soothe and kiss her, to soften his voice as she clung to him desperately. (Why did she have to feel so desperate?)

"Cathy, my heart, put away those fears instilled by the cruel grandmother. She wanted us to believe in hell and its everlasting torments of revenge. There is no hell but that which we make for ourselves. There is no heaven but that which we build between us. Don't chip away at my belief, my love, with your 'unconscious' deeds. I have no life without you."

"Then don't go to see your mother this summer."

He raised his head and stared over hers, pain in his eyes. I slid silently onto the floor, to sit and stare at them, speechless, utterly bewildered. What was going on? Why was I suddenly so afraid?

SEEDS OF YESTERDAY

Book 4

The final, haunting novel in the extraordinary story that has enthralled millions!

The horror began with Flowers in the Attic, the terrifying tale of four innocent children locked away from the world by a cruel mother.

The shocking fury continued with Petals on the Wind and If There Be Thorns. Now V.C. Andrews has created the last dark chapter in the strange, chilling tale of passion and peril that has captivated millions of readers around the world.

Cathy and Chris, entwined with the evil that haunts their children, living with the fearful spectre of Foxworth Hall, are awaiting the final, shuddering climax... prisoners of a past they cannot escape.

The music soared... They danced on and on...

In the rosy glow of the evening sunset, I stood unobserved in the shadows of a great arch overhead and watched Jory dancing with Melodie in the huge foyer. She appeared a princess dancing with her lover. Oh, the passion Jory and Melodie had between them stirred a wistful longing in my own loins. To be young again like them... to have the chance to do it all over... do it right the second time around...

Suddenly I was aware that Bart was in another alcove, as if he'd waited to spy... He leaned casually against a door frame... but the burning dark eyes that followed Melodie weren't casual. They were full of the desire I'd seen before. My heart skipped.

When had Bart ever not wanted what belonged to Jory?