There are, famously, some one-book authors, like Margaret Mitchell or Ralph
Ellison (though someone else pieced together Ellison's second manuscript and
published it posthumously. Another odd phenomenon I've noticed is what I'll call
one-book-in-the-genre authors -- or sore-thumb works, since they stick out like a
sore thumb from the rest of an oeuvre. These are the ones who write one book that
is nothing like any of their others. For some reason, that one book always seems
to be better (or at least, I like it better) than any of their
others.
For example, I have no fondness for his usual genre
thrillers, and thus never plan to read anything else by Steven Coonts, but I loved
Cannibal Queen, his true story of barnstorming across the country in an
antique biplane. It's a wonderful read, if you like true stories, travel stories,
or airplanes.
I'm not much for unhappy endings, and don't expect I'd
be fond of anything else by Fay Weldon, but Letters to Alice: On First Reading
Jane Austen is a unique combination of letters, biography, history, and
argument in praise of literature. I've never read anything like it. The setting is
fictional, but the arguments in the first-person letters are obviously right from
Weldon's own passions.
I have no great liking for horror stories,
and, I'm afraid, a bit of snobbish disdain for anything on the best seller lists
(not enough, fortunately, to keep me from reading anything that sounds appealing,
which is why I'm a rabid Rowlingphile). But I loved Steven King's book On
Writing, which really ought to be called, "On Life and Writing" since that's a
better description. Rudder loved it too (we listened to the audio version, with
King himself reading) and he's even less of a wannabe writer than I
am.
Maybe what these have in common is that they are the books that
the writers really wanted to write -- and these are all writers with enough clout
to publish just about anything they want. Or maybe the publishers realized just
how good they all were. I don't know, but I keep an eye out now for sore-thumb
works, because there's a better than average chance they'll fall into the
"wonderfully quirky" category.