Fourteen years after publishing The Catcher in the Rye in 1951, the enigmatic author JD Salinger retreated to his home in rural Cornish, New Hampshire, and never published again. “There is a marvelous peace in not publishing,” he told the New York Times in 1974. He died in 2010 at the age of 91.

Despite only seeing The Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories (1953), Franny and Zooey (1961), and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963) published during his lifetime, it appears that Salinger did keep busy writing during his self-imposed exile. According to Salinger, the title of a new documentary and a corresponding 700-page book by the film’s director, Shane Salerno, and co-author David Shields, Salinger spent plenty of time writing, and five new books of his will be published starting in 2015.

The New York Times reported that Salinger’s new works include: a “story-filled ‘manual’ of the Vedanta religious philosophy”; a book called The Family Glass, with five never-before-seen stories; another collection of stories called The Last and Best of the Peter Pans, which will revisit the Caulfield family from The Catcher in the Rye; a novella based on Salinger’s years as a soldier in World War II; and a new novel set during the same period about the author’s first marriage.

Furthermore, in September 2013, Simon & Schuster will release the new Salinger biography, which details new findings and observations about the author’s life, mined from diaries, letters, and previously unseen photographs. In pre-sales, the book is currently ranked No. 126 on Amazon.

“I would expect it to be one of the biggest publishing events of the year, if not the decade,” Simon & Schuster publisher Jonathan Karp told the Times.

(via Business Week)