Thomas Heggen wrote only one book, Mister Roberts. The struggle for a second book didn’t end well.
DrCube, it’s Esme with one “e”. Ask any crossword puzzler.
He also wrote a novel called The Neon Bible, also published posthumously.
JK Rowling. Sure, the series has several books, but it’s just the one story.
I believe she did produce another book or two, but it seemed a half-hearted endeavor.
I was talking to a Book Guy - wish I could offer more, but it was someone who I believed should know this stuff - who said that Harris is/was a raging alcoholic. He caught lightning in a bottle with the first two books, and writes others to fund his…lifestyle.
If I have this wrong, sorry.
Nah, I don’t think so:
(1) Each of the Harry Potter books is an individual story, even if they all together tell a larger story.
(2) Even if it’s all one story, it’s a long enough one that she’s hardly in the running for “least prolific.”
(3) In addition to the seven Harry Potter books and a small handful of supplementary volumes, she’s written one “mainstream” adult novel and three (so far) mysteries under the pen name of Robert Galbraith.
Well … maybe. But I still think she counts.
If she counts, then surely J.R.R. Tolkien does.
I would say he’s not prolific as far as novels are concerned, but he wrote a helluva lot of other stuff.
Looks like we just might have some more JDS to look forward to: J. D. Salinger - Wikipedia
Walter M. Miller Jr.'s only novel was A Canticle for Leibowitz, although he wrote many short stories.
Had one of those interesting late night bar conversations at an sf con with Terry Bisson telling us how he wrote the sequel.
James Joyce? Only three novels in about 25 years. OK, there’s a short story collection and some poetry, too.
I’d be he could be considered a best-seller, given how many times those books have been assigned in college courses over the years. Of course, how many of the copies were actually read may be a very different number…
Donna Tartt: The Secret History (1992); The Little Friend (2002); The Goldfinch (2013). At that rate, her next book will be 2023 or so.
Not sure how “best selling” it was but Norman Maclean published only the acclaimed A River Runs Through It during his lifetime. Maclean was already 73 when the book was published.Young Men and Fire was published after his death.
At the base of the Michael Jordan statue at Chicago’s United Center is a plaque reading:
“At that moment I knew, surely and clearly, that I was witnessing perfection. He stood before us, suspended above the earth, free from all its laws like a work of art, and I knew, just as surely and clearly, that life is not a work of art, and that the moment could not last.”
- Norman Maclean
*A River Runs Through It, 1976 *
However the quote isn’t in the book and presumably belongs to screenwriter Richard Friedenberg
Let me guess: he enjoys a nice Chianti
Suits me. The Goldfinch did nothing for me.
Ken Kesey’s only published works are One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion,.
Anna Sewell wrote only one work, her novel Black Beauty.
Metalious wrote two other books.
Correction: three. However, “Return to Peyton Place” was largely written by a ghostwriter and her editor.
Kesey also sort of wrote Caverns.