Flowers in the Attic Books in Order: How to read the Dollanganger Series by V.C. Andrews?

Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Thanks!

Written by V.C. Andrews, the Dollanganger series (aka the Flowers in the Attic series) is a gothic horror and family saga spinning a tale of dreadful secrets and dark, forbidden passions. The first book in the series, Flower in the Attic, is a worldwide best-seller that has been adapted twice for television.

V.C. Andrews died in 1986 and didn’t finish the 5th book in the series, Garden of Shadows. The book was completed by ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman, who wrote all the sequels and prequels of the Dollanganger series since.

How to read the Flowers in the Attic Series in Order?

The Dollanganger series in Publication Order:

1. Flowers In The Attic – They were a perfect family, golden and carefree-until a heartbreaking tragedy shattered their happiness. Now, for the sake of an inheritance that will ensure their future, the children must be hidden away out of sight, as if they never existed. Kept on the top floor of their grandmother’s vast mansion, their loving mother assures them it will be just for a little while. But as brutal days swell into agonizing months and years, Cathy, Chris, and twins Cory and Carrie realize their survival is at the mercy of their cruel and superstitious grandmother…and this cramped and helpless world may be the only one they ever know.
2. Petals on the Wind – Forbidden love comes into full bloom. For three years they were kept hidden in the eaves of Foxworth Hall, their existence all but denied by a mother who schemed to inherit a fortune. For three years their fate was in the hands of their righteous, merciless grandmother. They had to stay strong…but in their hopeless world, Cathy and her brother Christopher discovered blossoming desires that tumbled into a powerful obsession. Now, with their frail sister Carrie, they have broken free and scraped enough together for three bus tickets and a chance at a new life. The horrors of the attic are behind them…but they will carry its legacy of dark secrets forever.
3. If There Be Thorns – Christopher and Cathy have made a loving home for their handsome and talented teenager Jory, their imaginative nine-year-old Bart, and a sweet baby daughter. Then an elderly woman and her strange butler move in next door. The Old Woman in Black watches from her window, lures lonely Bart inside with cookies and ice cream, and asks him to call her “grandmother.” Slowly Bart transforms, each visit pushing him closer to the edge of madness and violence, while his anguished parents can only watch. For Cathy and Chris, the horrors of the past have come home…and everything they love may soon be torn from them.

4. Seeds of Yesterday – The forbidden love that blossomed when Cathy and Christopher were held captive in Foxworth Hall is one the Dollanganger family’s darkest secrets. Now, with three grown children and even a new last name, the pair seem to have outlived a twisted legacy. But on their son Bart’s twenty-fifth birthday, when the spiteful and disturbed young man claims his rightful inheritance, the full, shattering truth of their tainted past will be revealed at Foxworth Hall-the place where the nightmare began, and where Christopher and Cathy were once just innocent flowers in the attic…
5. Garden of Shadows – 5th book in the series, it’s also a prequel to Flowers in the Attic. It is recommended to read it in the publication order. 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 had 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 Diaries Series in Order, a spin-off to the Dollanganger Series (By Andrew Neiderman)

The Diaries Series is a spin-off series to the Dollanganger saga telling the events from the perspective of Christopher Dollanganger.

6. Christopher’s Diary: Secrets of Foxworth – Seventeen-year-old Kristin Masterwood is thrilled when her father’s construction company is hired to inspect the Foxworth property for a prospective buyer. The once grand Southern mansion still sparks legends and half-truths about the four innocent Dollanganger children, even all these decades later. Accompanying her dad to the “forbidden territory,” they find a leather-bound book, its yellowed pages filled with the neat script of Christopher Dollanganger himself. Her father grows increasingly uneasy about her reading it, but as she devours the teen’s story page by page, his shattering account of temptation, heartache, courage, and betrayal overtakes Kristin’s every thought. And soon her obsession with the doomed boy crosses a dangerous line…
7. Christopher’s Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger – Christopher’s Diary: Secret Brother – A young boy suffers amnesia from a trauma he suffered in what feels like must have been another life. He’s adopted into a wealthy family–but what will happen when he learns the truth about his past?
8. Secret Brother – A young boy suffers amnesia from a trauma he suffered in what feels like must have been another life. He’s adopted into a wealthy family–but what will happen when he learns the truth about his past?

The Attic Series in Order (By Andrew Neiderman)

9. Beneath the Attic – Two generations before Corinne Foxworth locked her children in an attic, her grandmother, a gorgeous young girl named Corrine Dixon, is swept away by the charms of rich, sophisticated, and handsome Garland Foxworth. After discovering that Corrine is pregnant, Garland does what appears to be the honorable thing and marries her in a huge ceremony on the luxurious Foxworth Hall grounds. Both families fervently overlook the pregnancy, happy for a suitable resolution. Now the mistress of a labyrinthine estate, Corrine discovers that nothing is what is seems. Garland is not the man once captivated by her charms, and she’s increasingly troubled by his infatuation with memories of his departed mother.
10. Out of the Attic – Married to the handsome, wealthy Garland Foxworth following a wildfire romance, and an unexpected pregnancy, young Corrine Dixon finds her life very different from how she imagined it. Often alone in the mansion of Foxworth Hall, she can practically feel the ancestors’ judgment of her as insufficient–as not a Foxworth. Even her son, Malcolm Foxworth, born in the luxe Swan Room and instantly whisked away to a wet nurse, feels alien to her. With a husband alternately absent and possessively close, Corrine doesn’t yet realize that she’s barely scratched the surface of what lies beneath Foxworth Hall’s dark facade and the family that guards its legacies.
11. Shadows of Foxworth – When a car crash kills their parents, Marlena and Yvon lose not only France, but also their identity. Sent to Richmond, Virginia, they arrive at the home of two aunts they’ve never met before, who tell them that their true last name is Dawson, that their father had fled the family years back–and that now the family is calling in the debt. Trapped in a mansion with as many secrets as rooms, Marlena yearns for escape. But in America, you can either make friends or make profit, and Yvon suddenly seems much more interested in the latter. While he is free to leave the house, Marlena is left to avoid lecherous tutors and the secretary-to-wife track expected of a woman. Caught between mastering the game to escape it and falling prey to its allure, she needs to learn fast-for Malcolm Foxworth has cast his eye in her direction. And no family name can protect her from the twisted roots of the Dollanganger family tree.

The Dollanganger Series Books in Chronological Order:

Thanks to Melissa in the comments for this Flowers in the Attic Reading Order following the chronological order!

1. Beneath the Attic
2. Out of the Attic
3. Shadows of Foxworth
4. Garden of Shadows
5. Flowers In The Attic
6. Petals on the Wind
7. If There Be Thorns
8. Seeds of Yesterday
9. Christopher’s Diary: Secrets of Foxworth
10. Christopher’s Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger
11. Christopher’s Diary: Secret Brother

If our article about the Flowers in the Attic Reading Order is useful to you, don’t forget to bookmark it! You may also want to read other V.C. Andrews series, like the Ruby Series (or The Landry Series), The Orphans Series, The Logan Series, The Casteel Series, and more