11 Book Sequels You Probably Didn't Know Existed

We get frustrated with Hollywood's propensity for weird sequels that seem to have little or nothing to do with the original, but it just so happens that the practice is older than filmmaking itself. Several classic stories have strange follow-ups you've never heard of, like...

1. The Starlight Barking

In case you're unaware, Disney's 101 Dalmatians was actually based on a novel, The Hundred and One Dalmatians, by Dodie Smith. You may also be further unaware that Smith wrote her own sequel that Disney ignored, titled The Starlight Barking.

Instead of just being a rehash of the original, Smith's story takes a very bizarre turn and involves all the world's dogs finding every living thing besides themselves in a form of stasis caused by a dog-like alien named Sirius, who invites them all to abandon Earth and join him on the Dog Star.

2. The Giver Trilogy

The first sequel, Gathering Blue, is only tangentially related to The Giver by being set in the same universe. However, the following book, Messenger, ties the two together and features the return of Jonas, the main character from The Giver, who obviously did not freeze to death at the end of that book.

3. The Book of the Green Planet

William Kotzwinkle, who wrote the novelization of the original film, published The Book of the Green Planet in 1985. In it, E.T. returns to his home planet of Vomestra, where he's punished for his trip to Earth and, thanks to a telepathic link, finds that Elliot has begun to grow up and forget the lessons learned from their time together.

4. Little Men & Jo's Boys

Little Men revolves around a group of young orphans who are students at a school run by two characters from Little Women, Jo March and her husband, Professor Friedrich. Jo's Boys, a direct sequel to Little Men, features the orphans as adults and shows how their lives changed as a result of interacting with the March family.

5. Closing Time

6. Paradise Regained

What failed to make nearly so much of a splash is Milton's follow-up poem, Paradise Regained, which was published in 1671, four years after Paradise Lost. As opposed to the original's 12 books, Regained is a mere four. It tells the story of Jesus' temptation by Satan as seen in the Book of Luke, but the poem never really caught on like the original and is widely unknown today.

7. The Tom Sawyer Series

The first, Tom Sawyer Abroad, features Huck, Tom, and Jim attempting to cross the ocean in a hot air balloon while facing numerous hurdles along the way. After that came Tom Sawyer, Detective, which has Tom and Huck attempting to solve a mystery involving stolen diamonds and a possible murder. Further, Twain had three incomplete Tom Sawyer novels--Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians, Schoolhouse Hill, and Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy, the last of which was very nearly completed.

8. The Gone With the Wind Sequels

The book has four sequels, with varying levels of authenticity. The first, Scarlett, was an authorized sequel by Alexandra Ripley and was widely panned. A second that ignores Scarlett, Rhett Butler's People, is a re-telling of the original novel from Butler's point of view by author Donald McCraig.

Then there are the unauthorized sequels: The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall is a satirical re-telling from the perspective of an O'Hara family slave. Finally, The Winds of Tara by Katherine Pinotti is a direct sequel to the original that the Mitchell family legally blocked from publication in America.

9. The Second Jungle Book

A year after The Jungle Book's release, Kipling wrote a follow-up book called The Second Jungle Book, featuring five further adventures of Mowgli and his friends. Although Disney made an animated Jungle Book 2 and a live-action film called The Second Jungle Book: Mowgli and Baloo, neither actually follows the plot of The Second Jungle Book.

10. The Last Ringbearer

That's the premise behind Russian author Kirill Yeskov's unauthorized sequel, The Last Ringbearer. While it's not an official sequel, the book is actually fairly popular on its own merits. Yeskov presents Mordor as a highly advanced society based around science and technology. Not unlike Gregory Maguire's Wicked, The Last Ringbearer argues that "history is written by the winners" and that Mordor was actually a victim of the primitive cultures of men who blindly followed the Luddite-esque Gandalf.

11. The Amityville Saga

The Amityville books, however, tell a different tale. The Lutz family claimed that their paranormal experiences didn't end when they left 112 Ocean Avenue. According to The Amityville Horror Part II, the demonic forces continued to plague them at Kathy's mother's house. A second sequel, Amityville: The Final Chapter, that also claims to be true, says that the haunting even followed them to California. Other books followed, some even featuring the Lutz family, but all were acknowledged as fictional.