death_date death_place birth_place name birth_date genre image article_title birth_name occupation
19 december 1986 virginia beach , virginia , u.s. portsmouth , virginia , u.s. v. c. andrews 6 june 1923 gothic horror family saga v. c. andrews.jpg v. c. andrews
 cleo virginia andrews novelist
v. c. andrews

cleo virginia andrews -lrb- june 6 , 1923 -- december 19 , 1986 -rrb- , better known as v. c. andrews or virginia c. andrews , was an american novelist .
she was born in portsmouth , virginia .
andrews died of breast cancer at the age of 63 .
andrews ' novels combine gothic horror and family saga , revolving around family secrets and forbidden love -lrb- frequently involving themes of consensual incest , most often between siblings -rrb- , and they often include a rags-to-riches story .
her best-known novel is the infamous bestseller `` flowers in the attic '' -lrb- 1979 -rrb- , a tale of four children locked in the attic of a wealthy virginia family for over three years by their estranged pious grandmother .
her novels were so successful that after her death her estate hired a ghost writer , andrew neiderman , to write more stories to be published under her name .
in assessing a deficiency in her estate tax returns , the internal revenue service argued -lrb- successfully -rrb- that virginia andrews 's name was a valuable commercial asset , the value of which should be included in her gross estate .
her novels have been translated into czech , french , italian , german , spanish , dutch , japanese , korean , turkish , greek , finnish , hungarian , swedish , polish , portuguese , lithuanian and hebrew .
