Brown included that crack even though he published the book under a female pseudonym. He knew that no one would buy a book like this unless it was written by a woman (which ... didn't stop him from writing it). His choice of pseudonym is exactly as creative as you would expect: Danielle Brown.

Berkley Trade "That name contains 'Dan Brown'!" exclaimed noted symbologist Robert Langdon thoughtfully.

It seems strange that the book wasn't credited to his future wife, who actually helped write it, but she received no credit at all, for what are presumably very good reasons. The couple was shocked that the book wasn't better-received, selling only a few thousand copies before going out of print, and Brown now avoids acknowledging it for similarly mysterious reasons.

Eventually, King found his writing career so easy that he decided to start an entirely new one, and began publishing novels as Richard Bachman. One of the first books under that name was a novel that King first wrote as a dejected 19-year-old. It follows an abused kid who takes a gun to school, kills his teacher, and plays weird games with the other students. Eventually they all fall in love with him. It's what Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris would have considered slash fiction. Which is the reason Stephen King came to regret writing it.

A copy of Rage was found in the locker of one school shooter, post-shooting. Feeling that the book was a "possible accelerant" for troubled youth, King ripped it off the shelves faster than you could say "Tommyknockers." A total recall of a Stephen King book meant so very, very much lost revenue, but it was for the greater good. Besides, that dude is never gonna hurt for money, and if he ever does, he can churn out a quick "haunted ottoman or whatever" story and be rolling deep again.

His chief complaint about his wife? The army of men who also think she's pretty. It's an absolute nightmare, he assures us, lamenting the "weird degradation" of standing near a person with symmetrical features as other people insist on being nice to her. Weirdly, there's no mention of the degradation she experiences at the hands of these barbarians. The person who most objectifies his wife appears to be Michael Lewis, who at one point compares her to actual scenery, likening her to "the itinerary of a sexual tour group." Nowhere is this more apparent than an encounter with a construction crew straight out of a cartoon, about which Lewis comes to the exact wrong conclusion.

New Republic

Of course, it couldn't be that the men respect her more as his property than an independently functioning human being. That wouldn't appeal to the ego he spent a full page stroking. She's the bad guy here, threatening to destroy lives and incomes through the wicked act of existing. Is it any wonder their marriage lasted about as long as one of his books?

The King's Men, written under the perfectly crafted alias "Christian Fall," follows a wealthy 17th-century young English man who somehow manages to hide his sexuality while boning half the hamlet, "including the submissive parish cleric." All this covert humping masks the main character's love for one particular young man, and in a tragic twist, the men wind up wielding spears on opposite sides of a battle.

There's plenty of euphemistic spearing, too. Right from the opening chapter, we dive mouth-first onto some serious dick worship:

Smaller and underdeveloped, he felt weak and useless in the horseman's powerful presence. He could see the thickness of the other's cock through the soft leather of his short britches and felt a pang of jealousy.

We should also mention that Gatiss plays Sherlock's brother, Mycroft, in the show. So now you're picturing that. We're sorry (or you're welcome, preferences depending).

Copies of the out-of-print guide regularly go for up to $250, and it's easy to see why. It's written exactly the way you'd expect Martin Amis to write a video game guide, and it's delightful. Here's his philosophical rumination on the age-old debate of risk versus reward in Pac-Man: Do I take risks in order to gobble up the fruit symbol in the middle of the screen? I do not, and neither should you. Like the fat and harmless saucer in Missile Command (q.v.), the fruit symbol is there simply to tempt you into hubristic sorties. Bag it.

It's a work of art. Why he's scrubbed this title from his bibliography, we will never understand.