In 1956, Grace Metalious published Peyton Place , the novel that unbuttoned the straitlaced New England of the popular imagination, transformed the publishing industry, topped the bestseller lists for more than a year, and made its young author one of the most talked-about people in America. In 1959, the sizzling sequel, Return to Peyton Place , picked up where Peyton Place left off: Allison MacKenzie, now the author of America's No. 1 bestseller, is thrown into the glamorous whirl of the smart set of New York and Hollywood. At home, the rest of the most controversial characters in 1950s American fiction continue to create a stir in this ongoing expose of sex, hypocrisy, social inequity, and class privilege in contemporary America. Peyton Place, the small, seemingly respectable New England town, is revealed as a vividly realistic cauldron of secrets and scandal.