The Slatest

Documentary Claims Five New J.D. Salinger Books Will Be Published, Starting as Early as 2015

A January 29, 2010 photo shows French edition books by author J.D. Salinger at a bookstore in Paris

Photo by LOIC VENANCE/AFP/Getty Images

J.D. Salinger died in 2010 but his publishing history may be far from over. A new documentary, and companion book, on the famously reclusive author claims Salinger left detailed instructions for his estate to publish at least five books in a certain order, starting as early as 2015. The Associated Press obtained an early copy of Salinger, the book co-written by David Shields and Shane Salerno scheduled for release September 3, and says it provides “by far the most detailed report of previously unreleased material.” Even though no Salinger book has come out since the early 1960s, the author of The Catcher in the Rye was known to have continued writing.

Shane Salerno spent nine years researching and filming the documentary that is scheduled to come out September 6 and tells the New York Times that his understanding of the publishing plans for the new work came out “fairly late” in his research. The news of the publishing plans came from two anonymous sources described as “independent and separate.”

Entertainment Weekly breaks down the supposedly upcoming titles:

—an anthology, The Family Glass, which will include the existing Glass family stories along with five new ones as well as a Glass family genealogy.

—a World War II novel inspired by Salinger’s enormously complicated relationship with his first wife, Sylvia, who may have been a Gestapo informant.

—a manual of the Hindu Vedanta religion, which Salinger followed for the last 50 years of his life.

—a novella based on Salinger’s own experiences that, according to the authors, “takes the form of a counterintelligence agent’s diary entries during World War II.”

—“a complete retooling” of Salinger’s unpublished Holden Caulfield story The Last and Best of the Peter Pans, which will be packaged with the existing Caulfield stories as well as new stories and The Catcher in the Rye, “creating a complete history of the Caulfield family.”