The New York Times Fiction Best Sellers of 1966 The New York Times Fiction Best Sellers of 1966 This is a list of adult fiction books that topped "The New York Times" Fiction Best Seller list in 1966. Only three novels topped the list that year, which was dominated by Jacqueline Susann's "Valley of the Dolls" which spent 28 weeks at the top of the list and 65 weeks in the top 10. "Valley" was toppled by Robert Crichton's "The Secret of Santa Vittoria", a World War II story based on fact, which sold more than 100,000 copies in the first month of its release. It spent 18 weeks
Jacqueline Susann by Bernard Geis on February 10, 1966, and "took off like a Cape Canaveral space shot." The story was said to be a "roman à clef", with characters in the novel reportedly based on real-life celebrities such as Judy Garland, Dean Martin, and Ethel Merman. Although "Publishers Weekly", in an advance review, called the novel "powerful and sometimes fascinating," the book received largely negative reviews. Gloria Steinem panned the book in "The New York Herald Tribune" as did the reviewer in "The New York Times". "Time" magazine called it the "Dirty Book of the Month," and said, "it might more