New J.D. Salinger Books Will Reportedly Be Published

A new documentary and book about the late reclusive author J.D. Salinger are due to be released at the start of September—and the NY Times is reporting that Salinger instructed his estate to publish at least five additional books in a sequence starting at early as 2015. Some of the five books are said to be entirely new, some extending past work, including the stories of the Glass family and the Caulfields from The Catcher In The Rye.

One of the Salinger books would center on Holden Caulfield and his family, including a revised version of an early, unpublished story "The Last and Best of the Peter Pans." Another novel would be set during World War II and based on his first marriage; another would include a story-filled "manual" of the Vedanta religious philosophy, which Salinger is said to have practiced. There would also be a publication called The Family Glass that would feature five new stories about the Glass family along with the classic ones from Franny And Zooey.

Salinger never released a book after the early '60s, and his last a novella, entitled "Hapworth 16, 1924," was published in The New Yorker in 1965. Even so, friends, neighbors and family members all confirmed that Salinger had kept writing during his 50 years out of the public eye; Salinger told The New York Times in 1974 that he wrote daily, though only for himself. "There is a marvelous peace in not publishing," he said at the time.

Salinger's son, Matt Salinger, who helps run the author's literary estate, hasn't commented on the report so far. It's unclear who would publish the books as well; spokesman Terry Adams of Little, Brown and Company, which released Catcher and Salinger's other books, declined to comment.