This is a list of unpublished books by notable people, alphabetized by author. These notable people may be published authors, but not necessarily.
Unpublished novels
Sholem Aleichem: Motl, Peysi the Cantor's Son, left unfinished at the time of his death
Charles Alverson: The Word, Caleb and Lost in Austin
Allen Appel: Sea of Time, unpublished novel in the published Alex Balfour Pastmaster series
L. Frank Baum: Our Married Life, Johnson, The Mystery of Bonita and Molly Oodle. Reported in Katherine Rogers' L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz and Michael Patrick Hearn's The Annotated Wizard of Oz. According to Hearn, although not a published statement, The Mystery of Bonita is mentioned in contracts related to The Oz Film Manufacturing Company. The others are noted on file folders that once contained them and correspondence recovered from the Reilly & Lee offices, but the manuscripts themselves remain lost. The books were intended for adult readers and correspondence for the first of these, Our Married Life, indicates that, unlike his four published adult novels, he did not want these books to appear under a pseudonym. Frank Joslyn Baum's biography of L. Frank, To Please a Child, claims that Maud Gage Baum burned Baum's unpublished manuscripts; however, it is known that much of this biography was falsified after Frank J. and Maud's falling out over the rights to the Oz books.
Harold Brodkey: A Party of Animals, a 2000-page manuscript in 1976 later published in a different form
Louise Brooks: Naked on My Goat, autobiographical novel
James Brown: A Fine Madness, a novel which Brown says "never found a publisher"
Charles Bukowski: The Poet
Michael Chabon: Fountain City, abandoned after 1,500 pages but then inspired Chabon's Wonder Boys
John Cheever: The Swimmer, after writing 150 pages of this novel, Cheever reduced it to a 12-page short story
Joan Collins: The Ruling Passion and Hell Hath No Fury, both in a legal battle with Random House which Collins won in 1996
Philip K. Dick: A Time for George Stavros and Nicholas and the Higs, both lost manuscripts, and The Owl in Daylight, uncompleted at the time of his death
Lee Duncan: rough draft of an autobiography by the trainer of Rin Tin Tin
Ken Grimwood: untitled sequel to Replay, in progress at the time of his death, and a collaboration with Tom Atwill
Larry Hama: Eamon Diaz and the Vampire Queen
Donald Hamilton: The Dominators
V. T. Hamlin: The Devil's Daughter
Thomas Hardy: The Poor Man and the Lady, Hardy's first novel ; rejected by five publishers and ms. later destroyed
Geoffrey Jenkins: Per Fine Ounce, a commissioned James Bond novel circa 1966; the copyright holders rejected the novel, claiming that it was "unpublishable"
Stephen King: The Aftermath and The House on Value Street
Jonathan Lethem: Heroes, 125-page novel which he wrote while in high school
Karl Marx: Scorpion and Felix, an unpublished and now fragmentary comedic novel
Hugh MacLennan: So All Their Praises and A Man Should Rejoice
Marilyn Manson: Holy Wood
Chuck Palahniuk: Insomnia: If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Already
Frederik Pohl: For Some We Loved, about New York advertising agencies; burned by author, who described it as "a long, complicated, and very bad novel"
J.D. Salinger: He continued writing through the last half-century of his long life, when he was a recluse. Salinger wrote at least one or two unpublished novels, and possibly fifteen or more.
Artie Shaw: The Education of Albie Snow, a semi-autobiographical 1000-page, three-volume work
C. P. Snow: 1950-51 novel deleted from the Strangers and Brothers series
Charles Willeford: Grimhaven, sequel to Miami Blues
Jerry Yulsman: Gotham, in progress at the time of his death
Unpublished nonfiction
F. Lee Bailey: memoir about his defense of Patty Hearst
Calvin Beck: Sense of Wonder, survey of 1940s fantasy films
Jack Bradbury: autobiography about working in animation and comic books
Barry Brown: Unsung Heroes of the Horrors, interview profiles of actors
Buff Cobb: Memoirs of a Subdeb in Hollywood
Lee Duncan: rough draft of an autobiography by the trainer of Rin Tin Tin
John Howard Griffin: Scattered Shadows, memoir about the author's blindness
Napoleon Hill: Outwitting The Devil )
V. T. Hamlin: The Man Who Walked with Dinosaurs and Four Rivers
Adolf Hitler: Zweites Buch, a sequel to Mein Kampf
JP Miller: A Ship Without a Shore, memoir of Miller's WWII experiences aboard the aircraft carrier USS Cabot
Fulton Oursler: autobiography in progress at the time of his death
Theodore Roosevelt: The Winning of the West: Roosevelt's series was originally meant to be more at least six books. However, due to the death of his first wife, Roosevelt edited the series to conclude at four volumes.
Kay Sage: China Eggs, a memoir of 1910-35, covering her family, childhood, travels, painting, life in Italy, her marriage to Prince Ranieri di San Faustino and her friendship with Ezra Pound.
Yvette Vickers: autobiography in progress at the time of her death
