That was just a prologue, to outline the politico-economic circumstances of the times relevant to the events, which presages the intellectual depth of the book. But if you found it boring and inconsequential, you probably wouldn’t have appreciated the rest of the work, either, which is not intended to be a page-turner… (Talking about Stieg Larsson’s “Girl/Dragon Tattoo” here.) In fact, Larsson never intended for the novels to be offered to a publisher in the first place, he wrote it with no reader in mind, just to self-analyze and critique his own thoughts and style. The namuscripts were sent to a publisher after his death…
Joni Mitchell’s autobiography.
I always thought God had another book in Him(let’s call it the “Harper Lee Syndrome”)
Surely He can tie up a few loose ends, be more specific about some events, and let us in on the parts where He was just messin’ with our minds. It’s the least He can do, since we kept His first attempt on the best sellers list all these years. 
Flashman in the Civil War
The finish to Douglas Adams’ The Salmon of Doubt
Repeating the substance of a post by me in the Cafe Society thread of a few months back, Aw, heck: I bounced off “Flashman” by George MacDonald Fraser: it would appear, from comments by Fraser in an interview with him in 2002, that he never in fact planned to write a Flashman / Civil War novel. He is quoted as saying: "to me, the American Civil War is a colossal bore. It was a rotten war, it’s been done to death, and I’m not terribly interested in it. An American wrote to me urging me to write it, saying it had to be the high point in Flashman’s career. I wrote back saying, ‘Son, it’s a foreign sideshow. The Crimea, the Indian Mutiny, they were the important things in Flashman’s life. Your Civil War? He was so disinterested that he fought on both sides.’ "
(While Fraser’s American correspondent could perhaps have made his point in a more tactful way; Fraser’s quoted words, both vis-a-vis the American and his readers as a whole, have made me hold him in less high regard than formerly, as a person – regardless of his talent as an author. Frankly, I feel they leave a bit of a nasty taste: as though Fraser were relishing having, for years, tantalised and strung-along his fans with “in-passing” references to what sound like chequered and fascinating Civil War doings on Flashman’s part – when he never had any intention actually of writing a novel about his anti-hero and that conflict.)
Book 5 of the War Against the Chtorr series.
Book 6 of the A Song of Ice and Fire series.
Ronnie James Dio was working on his autobiography during his final years, he was halfway through the Black Sabbath era when he died. His wife Wendy promised to finish the book and publish it, but there’s been no news of any progress for years. It seems to be in permanent limbo.
As I mention in the Acknowledgments to my first book, three authors I consulted – Jerome Y. Lettvin, Thalia Phyllies (Feldman) Howe and Emily Erwin Culpepper all said that they were going to write books on the Gorgon. They never did. It’d be interesting to see what they would have done, given the greater space a book would have given them.
There are a few books that were never finished by the original authors. In some cases, others finished the book. But it would’ve been interesting to see the author’s actual conclusions:
Hornblower and the Crisis by C.S. Forester. The part he wrote has been published, along with a brief note on how he’d end it. But it’d be interesting to see if he would have put in a twist like the one suggested by C. Northcote Parkinson in his Biography of Horatio Hornblower
The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens. I hate* it when they don’t get to complete a mystery
Almuric by Robert E. Howard. I didn’t know for years that Howard never finished it, and that the complete novel we have was finished by someone else.
The Man with the Golden Gun by Ian Fleming. He finished it, but he never went through and finished revising and polishing it, and it shows. He might even have given it a more satisfying ending.
The Barsac Mission by Jules Verne. The version we have now is virtually the work of his son, Michel Verne. It would be interesting to see what the older Verne would have made of that incomplete novel.
Tom Sawyer Among the Indians – Mark Twain’s manuscript breaks off in the middle of a sentence. Some critics think he didn’t finish it because he didn’t like where it was going, and Twain was known for burning manuscripts he wasn’t happy with. But he might have been able to salvage this.
Variable Star by Robert Heinlein. Much as I like Spider Robinson’s work, his completion of this novel feels much more like his work than Heinlein’s.
Tarzan – the Lost Adventure – completed by Joe Lansdale. as others have pointed out, he ignored clear signs of where Burroughs was going with the plot. I guarantee that he wouldn’t have ended it with a karate match with a giant praying mantis.
Reminds me of Dream’s Library from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.
FWIW, we did get “The Silent Gondoliers.” (Quite mediocre, alas.)
I suppose it goes without saying that the Necronomicon would top the list.
I’ve said this before here, but the audiobook versions of Fear Nothing and its sequel Seize The Night are THE best pairings of protagonist and narrator. Christopher Snow has a genetic condition where he can’t go out in daylight, so of course he and his dog explore his town by night, and strangeness ensues.
Well, Keith Szarabajka has the perfect smokey voice for the troubled-yet-optomistic outcast. And does his surfer compatriot and girlfriend well, too.
Anyhow, Dean Koontz continually claims he’s working on “the third book of the Moonlight Bay trilogy”. For the last 18 years…
My god, there’s even a Wikipedia page for it. “Ride the Storm”, Dean… soon, please.
Book Of Mormon…?
The Bible is basically 66 books anyway, which isn’t bad for output.
I want to read Time Hump. I’m also curious about The Omega Glory and the works of Kilgore Trout.
There was one Kilgore Trout novel, “Venus on the Half Shell.”
Vaguely amusing, but far from memorable; it didn’t even really succeed as parody.
Oh, me too. Even more that the one about Stu the Cockatoo.
BTW, here’s what a quantity surveyor does. It’s hilarious to think that someone wrote a children’s book about it.
Wiki has a list of fictional books.Mainly books mentioned in other books.
So glad to see Ethel get mentioned!
I’ve been known to make slipcovers for books, with fictional titles. I’ve been reading a Phillip Pullman book in the local coffee joint, and I’m a little disappointed that no one’s noticed that I appear to be studying “Ethel the Aardvark Goes Quantity Surveying”.
Previously, I’ve been seen in various cafés reading “The Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra”, “How I Rose From the Dead in My Spare Time and So Can You” (Phillip K. Dick), “Prognosis: Negative!” (the novelization of a movie mentioned on Seinfeld), “When Real Things Happen to Imaginary People” and “The ‘Buggre Alle Thys’ Bible” (Gaiman/Pratchett), and “Men, Monks, and Gamekeepers: a Study in Popular Legend” (last seen on Mr. Tumnus’s bookshelf).
My goal is to have an entire bookcase of books that make visitors pause and go “Wait a minute…”
Still in the works: “Fowl or Foul?: A Handbook of Hippogriff Psychology”, “Growing Flowers by Candlelight in Hotel Rooms” (from a Brautigan book), “The Philosophy of the Mundane: Why the Muggles Prefer Not to Know” (allegedly by Professor Mordicus Egg), “Commander Coriander Salamander and 'er Singlehander Bellylander” (follow-up to “Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie”) and “The Six Bunny-Wunnies and Their Layover in Anderson, Indiana” (one of Snoopy’s favorites).
The fact that no one besides me seems to care is a part of my master plan that I didn’t count on.
My favorite Sci-fi writer, Rick Cook, He wrote a series of books were a computer programmer was transported to a world of magic where he discovered that by creating a magic programming language he could control magic in a way the natives of the world never could.
He had a heart attack after writing the 5th book which he claims created a change in him which prevented him from continuing to write fiction. Parts of the 6th book have been released but it seems unlikely that it’ll ever be completed.
I would have liked to see that too. Other disastrous episodes hinted at in his biography that I would have liked to have seen was his service in the Zulu Wars (there is only a brief mention in one of the books), with Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, and during the Boxer Rebellion in China.
I highly recommend “Drood” by Dan Simmons.