This piece came about in a strange-ish way, as they so often do. I had fallen down a Wiki hole of truly epic proportions, having stumbled upon the fifty most interesting Wikipedia articles and fifty more. STOP. I know what you're going to do, and how much time it's going to take. Please just open two tabs and dump those links in and come back, or I'll never see you again. And I…

As Mallory announced on Thursday, today will be devoted to the study and discussion of V.C. Andrews, the author of Flowers in the Attic. For those of you who aren't terrifyingly and intimately familiar with her work, Andrews was, for a time, the Stephen King of incest. You can't begin to imagine the level of success she reached in her lifetime. Whatever number of books you think are required to move in order to…