Garden of Shadows

Garden of Shadows is a 1987 novel attributed to V. C. Andrews. It was published after her death in 1986, and her estate commissioned the ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman to continue writing novels under her name from plot outlines she had left. There is some dispute over whether this particular book was written partly by Andrews before she died or entirely by Neiderman.

It is the fifth novel of the Dollanganger series, which began with Flowers in the Attic and continued with Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns and Seeds of Yesterday, and it functions as a prequel because its events take place before those of the first book. The story explains the origins of Olivia Winfield, the grandmother of Flowers in the Attic, and the events that make her the cold, domineering mistress of Foxworth Hall, and it also follows Corinne's childhood and eventual betrayal.

The plot is a courtship that becomes something else. Olivia accepts Malcolm Foxworth's proposal as a change of fortune and finds that the house she enters is ruled by a man with a hidden capacity for cruelty; his father then returns with a young second wife, and Malcolm's fixation on her sets the family's later history in motion.