FOREVER AMBER by Kathleen Winsor (1944)

Preposterously long (962 pages) and very naughty, Forever Amber is set in Restoration London, land of pox and periwigs. Amber St Clare, a beautiful country girl, loses her virginity to a nobleman, Lord Carlton, and goes to London as his mistress. When he departs overseas, she marries a physically hideous conman to avoid her baby being branded a bastard. Thrown into debtors' prison at Newgate, she escapes with the help of a highwayman. There follows a string of lovers until she marries an earl and, eventually, becomes the mistress of Charles II. Kathleen Winsor's book caused much outrage; it was banned in Boston and burned on the streets. But it sold 100,000 copies in its first week and can justifiably lay claim to being, in bonkbuster terms, the mother of them all.

PEYTON PLACE by Grace Metalious (1956)

When the novel that scandalised America was first published, a photo of its author appeared with the caption: "Pandora in blue jeans." No wonder. Before Grace Metalious, small towns in New England were all white picket fences and apple pies. Afterwards, they were seething nests of adultery, abortion, murder and incest. Peyton Place follows three women's lives: desperate housewife Constance MacKenzie; her daughter, Allison; and her employee, poor, abused Selena Cross. It remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 59 weeks and was made into a film and TV series. Metalious claimed not to know what all the fuss was about. "Even Tom Sawyer had a girlfriend. To talk about adults without talking about their sex drives is like talking about a window without glass."

VALLEY OF THE DOLLS by Jacqueline Susann (1966)

In her Pucci trouser suits and luxuriant false eyelashes, Jacqueline Susann, a former actress, set the standard for the modern bonkbuster novelist by touring relentlessly, reportedly writing thank you notes to everyone she met. Did this pay off? Yes. In spite of the best efforts of her critics ("She doesn't write, she types," said Gore Vidal), her novel went on to sell 30m copies worldwide. Valley of the Dolls is Mary McCarthy's The Group with added barbiturates (the "dolls" of the title): take a group of friends, and follow them down the years as men – and drugs – destroy their nascent self-confidence. Here, three women meet at a Broadway talent agency. Jennifer North is a showgirl who is diagnosed with breast cancer; Anne Welles is the face of a cosmetics company with a congenitally unfaithful husband; Neely O'Hara is a musical actress whose drug addiction will eventually put her in a psychiatric unit. Delicious.

SCRUPLES by Judith Krantz (1978)

Summing up the plot of Judith Krantz's first novel makes me laugh out loud. But anyway, here goes… Wilhelmina Hunnewell Winthrop (aka "Billy") is a member of a posh Boston family. However, as the child of a distinguished scientist, she must work for her living. This she does in New York, where she also, having lost a ton of weight, embarks on a voyage of sexual discovery. Thanks to her secretarial skills, however, she marries the CEO of a huge company. When he suffers a stroke and dies, she is finally a rich woman, at which point she decides… to open a luxury Beverly Hills boutique called Scruples! I had thought that Krantz, a former journalist, was well and truly out of fashion, but I hear Natalie Portman is producing an adaptation of Scruples for American TV with Claire Forlani as Billy.

HOLLYWOOD WIVES by Jackie Collins (1983)

Joan's sister's ninth novel, and her most successful, was later turned into a TV miniseries by Aaron Spelling. Hollywood Wives was marketed as an exposé, Jackie Collins having carried out extensive research from her eyrie above Sunset Boulevard. But the novel is hardly revelatory: its characters are mostly gym-obsessed, gossip-obsessed, Gucci-obsessed women with rich husbands rather than careers of their own. Among its cast of thousands (Collins loves Dickens) are: Elaine Conti, Beverly Hills hostess and compulsive shoplifter; Jason Swankle, an interior designer who runs a male escort agency; and Sadie LaSalle, top casting agent. The sex is eye-popping. Collins's new novel, The Power Trip, will be published in September.

POLO by Jilly Cooper (1991)

The bonkbuster crosses the water. Cooper began the Rutshire Chronicles – whose best-known character is Rupert Campbell-Black, an adulterous showjumper who only slightly redeems himself by winning Olympic gold – with Riders in 1985. In Polo, the third book, we follow his illegitimate daughter, Perdita, as she tries to bag Ricky France-Lynch, the most magnificent polo player of them all. Most fans felt the proportion of polo to sex in this novel was just plain wrong (too many chukkas), but it's still fun: doorstep-fat, and plenty of firm buttocks in tight jodhpurs. In truth, though, I will always prefer Cooper's 1970s romances whose girlish heroines – Bella, Octavia, Prudence – get into all manner of scrapes, whether they're living in a divine little flat just off the King's Road or a castle on a wild Scottish island.