Peyton Place

This expression is used in the short story "My Mother's Memoirs, My Father's Lie, and Other True Stories" - Russell Banks. It is a novel by Grace Metalious.
Selling sixty thousand copies within the first ten days of its release, it was publishing's second "blockbuster," (following Gone with the Wind in 1936) and remained on the New York Times best seller list for fifty-nine weeks. The main plot follows the lives of three women - lonely and repressed Constance Mackenzie, her illegitimate daughter Allison, and her employee Selena Cross, a girl from "across the tracks" - and how they come to terms with their identity as women and sexual beings in a small New England town. Hypocrisy, social inequities, and class privilege are recurring themes in a tale that includes incest, abortion, adultery, lust, and murder. Peyton Place has become an expression used to describe any place with sordid secrets. It was referenced in the 1968 song "Harper Valley PTA" by Tom T. Hall and Billy Joel's 1989 song "We Didn't Start the Fire."
Link for more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peyton_Place_%28novel%29