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Tom Clancy is like that too. Seems there is at least a new book every year even though he has been dead since 2013. Of course, he allegedly used ghostwriters when he was alive and his name is just a brand by now, but come on. Same for James Patterson (still alive though).

The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan was finished by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan's death etc.

There's been J.R.R. Tolkien books published fairly recently! (Dead since 1973.) And while I don't know what I believe, Christopher Tolkien could have made these up all by himself. Who the hell is going to know how finished these supposedly "found manuscripts" actually were?

And going further back, Dumas used ghostwriters extensively, and while extremely talented, he was also like a popular brand author at the time. The Count of Monte Cristo is believed to be written by Dumas himself, but the plot outline is by Auguste Maquet.

It's not a new thing. And it's not going to disappear anytime soon.
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Totally agree — it's fascinating how the idea of the "author" has evolved into more of a brand in many cases. With names like Tom Clancy or James Patterson, it feels less like you're buying a book by a person and more like you're buying into a particular formula or universe that carries their name. It’s a whole publishing machine.


And you're right — this isn't new. The Dumas/Maquet example is perfect. Even back then, storytelling was often a collaborative (or outsourced) effort, even if only one name went on the cover. Same with Robert Jordan and Sanderson — at least that handoff was transparent and handled with a lot of care and respect.


As for Tolkien, yeah… when new “lost” works keep appearing decades after an author’s death, it does make you wonder how much was truly finished or even written by them in the first place. But ultimately, as long as the stories resonate and there's an audience for them, I doubt this practice will ever go away.
 
Read The Tusks of Exctinction (2024) by Ray Nayler.

Science fiction thriller about mammoths brought back from the dead - led by the human consciousness of a 100-year dead elephant expert transferred into a mammoth-brain... Decent read.

Also read The Year of the Locust (2023) by Terry Hayes.

Hayes is primarily a screenwriter whose credits include Mad Max 2. This is his second novel after the acclaimed I Am Pilgrim (2013), which I have not yet read. And knowing nothing about it, I went in blind. Turns out it is a tight Tom Clancy-esque spy thriller - really good, for about 250 of the almost 700 pages. Then it turns into weirder territory before it goes bonkers - off the rails completely.

It is a truly fascinating work of fiction. Initially announced in 2014, sampled with chapters and blurbs which have since been rewritten completely and countless delays. What happened? I would really want to know. Blake Crouch is a very suitable comparison for the latter half of this novel (technothriller/science fiction).

Reception has been very mixed. I have to say I liked it a lot still, despite the jarring genre-shift and less than stellar logic in places. I wasn't bored once, and the action and tension is pretty damn good throughout. A sprawling, fascinating work. Can't stop thinking about how this came to be or the story I just experienced.
 
Maturin said:
Read The Tusks of Exctinction (2024) by Ray Nayler.

Science fiction thriller about mammoths brought back from the dead - led by the human consciousness of a 100-year dead elephant expert transferred into a mammoth-brain... Decent read.
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There was a similar book I read last year about a nature reserve where they had prehistoric animals, and then it turned out that in an underground facility they were breeding Neanderthals. It tried a bit too hard to be grounded in reality, with a premise like that it really only becomes fun when it goes over the top.
 
Read With a Vengeance (2025) by Riley Sager.

Todd Ritter is not a good writer, and with his pseudonym he's riding a wave of popular thriller/mystery novels penned by women. That this sort of guy writes very cynically thought out stories based on tropes, is of no surprise at all. Here he riffs on Agatha Christie, with a very over-the-top whodunit set in the 1950s on a train going across America.

This is a very bad novel, but it is very interesting from a meta perspective. It's so bad it's good. Premise, like always, is great and intriguing - writing and twists are not. I will probably read the next Riley Sager-novel as well... He actually did really well with The Only One Left (2023).

Also read I Am Pilgrim (2013) by Terry Hayes.

Almost 900 pages, this is a great epic spy-thriller combined with crime fiction. I enjoyed this a whole lot, might not be rooted much in a realism but is incredibly entertaining and a well-written story with a, for the genre, excellent narrative voice. Like Homeland, Tom Clancy etc.? This is for you.
 
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