Harper Lee made readers’ dreams come true when the publication of her second book was announced. Go Set a Watchman will be published on July 14—55 years after To Kill a Mockingbird.

So, we’re thinking about other authors we wish would suddenly come out (some posthumously) with another novel many years after their first—and only— full-length works of fiction.

Here’s a list of classic novels we wish had sequels, whatever they may have been.

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Narrated by an unnamed black man, Ellison’s 1952 novel was a triumph; he later published two collections of essays, but no more fiction. In his acceptance speech for the National Book Award in 1953, Ellison said, “I was to dream of a prose which was flexible, and swift as American change is swift, confronting the inequalities and brutalities of our society forthrightly, but yet thrusting forth its images of hope, human fraternity, and individual self-realization.” A little more of that, magically discovered decades after his death, would be welcome.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
A collection of Plath’s poetry did emerge 20 years after her death, and it won a Pulitzer Prize. Would it be too much to ask for an undiscovered novel?

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Ignatius J. Reilly didn’t see the light of day until more than a decade after Toole’s suicide at age 31, when the author’s mother helped shepherd it to publication. Like Plath, Toole won a posthumous Pulitzer. (It’s not as good as a sequel, but adaptations of the book are in the works. Rumor has it that the movie project is cursed; Nick Offerman is now set to portray him in a stage adaptation in Boston this fall.)

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The reclusive author published numerous short stories and novellas, but Catcher  was his only full-length novel. And we may get our wish with this one: In 2013, authors of a Salinger biography claimed there would be a “stream” of new material over the next five years, including the unpublished novels languishing in a gigantic safe.

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The most famous novel of the Civil War never had a sequel. The book ends with, “Tomorrow is another day”—who knows what could have happened? (This book was one of our NYPL librarians’ literary Waterloos!)

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Published in the waning years of the 19^th century, this novel got the infamous playwright and cad into major trouble for portraying decadence and sensuality. Although Wilde was prolific, writing copious essays and plays and stories, this was his only full-length novel.

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Pasternak’s first and only novel had controversial themes that got him into trouble in the former USSR, which refused to publish the book and would not allow him to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. He wrote poetry and translated plays and other work extensively but no more fiction.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Brontë died at age 30, just a year after her anti-Victorian masterpiece was published. Her sisters continued their literary careers, but the world never saw more of Emily. What more could have happened on those windswept moors if she’d lived?

Staff picks are chosen by NYPL staff members and are not intended to be comprehensive lists. We'd love to hear your picks! Leave a comment and tell us what you’d recommend.