The Flame and the Flower
The novel that invented modern genre romance. The first full-length adult romance published directly as a mass-market paperback, the first to sell a million copies in the genre format. Brandon and Heather's relationship has aged in ways that require historical context, but its raw emotional power and its role in creating an entire industry earn it permanent canonical status.
Brandon rapes Heather before the story is fairly started, and the book spends four hundred pages turning him into her reward. It is the genre's founding text; that is precisely the problem, since everything it founded had to be unlearned. The prose is violet going on purple, and Heather's chief skills are fainting and forgiveness.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
