42 1939 American novels

Adventures of a Young Man is a 1939 novel by John Dos Passos, which eventually became the first in this writer's District of Columbia Trilogy.

Almuric is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert E. Howard. It was originally serialized in three parts in the magazine Weird Tales beginning in May 1939. The novel was first published in book form in 1964 by Ace Books.

Ask the Dust is the most popular novel of Italian-American author John Fante, first published in 1939 and set during the Great Depression era in Los Angeles. It is one of a series of novels featuring the character Arturo Bandini as Fante's alter ego, a young Italian-American from Colorado struggling to make it as a writer in Los Angeles.

The Big Sleep (1939) is a hardboiled crime novel by American-British writer Raymond Chandler, the first to feature the detective Philip Marlowe. It has been adapted for film twice, in 1946 and again in 1978. The story is set in Los Angeles.

The Black Spectacles, first published in 1939, is a detective story by John Dickson Carr featuring his series detective Gideon Fell. This novel is a mystery of the type known as a locked room mystery.

Boy with a Pack is a children's historical novel by Stephen W. Meader. Set in 1837, it follows the journey of 17-year-old trader Bill Crawford from New Hampshire to the Ohio Country. The novel, illustrated by Edward Shenton, was first published in 1939 and was a Newbery Honor recipient in 1940.

By the Shores of Silver Lake is an autobiographical children's novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published in 1939, the fifth of nine books in her Little House series. It spans just over one year, beginning when she is 12 years old and her family moves from Plum Creek, Minnesota to what will become De Smet, South Dakota.

Carson of Venus is a science fantasy novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the third book in the Venus series. Burroughs wrote the novel in July and August 1937. It was serialized in 1938 in six weekly installments from January 8 to February 12 in Argosy, the same publication where the previous two Venus novels appeared. It was published in book form a year later from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Burroughs originally submitted the novel to a number of the "slick" magazines: Liberty, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, and Ladies' Home Journal. All rejected the story.

Christ in Concrete is a 1939 novel by Pietro Di Donato about Italian-American construction workers. The book, which made Di Donato famous overnight, was originally published by Esquire Magazine as a short story in 1937, and subsequently expanded into a novel by the 28-year-old Di Donato.

The Clue of the Tapping Heels is the 16th volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. It was first published in 1939. An updated, revised, and largely different story was published under the same title in 1970. A facsimile edition of the 1939 version was published by Applewood Books. As of 2006, this title is still in print.

Cold Steal is a novel that was published in 1939 by Phoebe Atwood Taylor writing as Alice Tilton. It is the third of the eight Leonidas Witherall mysteries.

The Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West set in Hollywood, California. The novel follows a young artist from the Yale School of Fine Arts named Tod Hackett, who has been hired by a Hollywood studio to do scene design and painting. While he works he plans an important painting to be called "The Burning of Los Angeles," a portrayal of the chaotic and fiery holocaust which will destroy the city. While the cast of characters Tod befriends are a conglomerate of Hollywood stereotypes, his greater discovery is a part of society whose "eyes filled with hatred," and "had come to California to die." This undercurrent of society captures the despair of Americans who worked and saved their entire lives only to realize, too late, that the American dream was more elusive than they imagine. Their anger boils into rage, and the craze over the latest Hollywood premiere erupts violently into mob rule and absolute chaos.

The Dragon's Teeth is a mystery novel published in 1939 featuring the popular fictional character Ellery Queen, which is also the pseudonym of the book's authors, Daniel Nathan and Manford (Emanuel) Lepofsky. It is primarily set in New York City, United States.

Drop To His Death is a mystery novel by the American writer John Dickson Carr, who published it under the name of Carter Dickson, in collaboration with John Rhode. It is a locked room mystery.

Freddy the Politician (1939) is the 6th book in the humorous children's series Freddy the Pig written by American author Walter R. Brooks and illustrated by Kurt Wiese. In this story, the Bean farm animals start a bank, and elect their first president, two institutions appearing through the rest of the series. Their honest and innocent approach is soon challenged by strangers from Washington.

Gadsby is a 1939 novel by Ernest Vincent Wright which does not include any words that contain the letter E, the most common letter in English. A work that deliberately avoids certain letters is known as a lipogram. The plot revolves around the dying fictional city of Branton Hills, which is revitalized as a result of the efforts of protagonist John Gadsby and a youth organizer.

The Girl is a novel by Meridel Le Sueur set during Prohibition and chronicling the development of a young woman from a naive small-town girl into a participant in a bank robbery.

The Golden Master (1939) is an American pulp novel featuring The Shadow, written by Walter Gibson under the house name Maxwell Grant. This was the 182nd Shadow story and it was published in The Shadow Magazine Vol. 31, No. 2 on 15 September 1939.

The Grapes of Wrath is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962.

Gray Lensman is a science fiction novel by American writer E. E. Smith. It was first published in book form in 1951 by Fantasy Press in an edition of 5,096 copies. The novel was originally serialized in the magazine Astounding in 1939. Gray Lensman is the fourth book in the Lensman series and the second to focus on the adventures of Lensman Kimball Kinnison.

Johnny Got His Gun is an anti-war novel written in 1938 by American novelist Dalton Trumbo and published in September 1939 by J. B. Lippincott. The novel won one of the early National Book Awards: the Most Original Book of 1939. A 1971 film adaptation was written for the screen and directed by Trumbo himself.

Kitty Foyle is a 1939 American novel by Christopher Morley. A bestseller in 1939 and 1940, it was adapted as a popular 1940 film, and was republished during World War II as an Armed Services Edition.

Lest Darkness Fall is an alternate history science fiction novel written in 1939 by American author L. Sprague de Camp. The book is often considered one of the best examples of the alternate history genre; it is certainly one of the earliest and most influential. Prominent alternate history author Harry Turtledove has said it sparked his interest in the genre as well as his desire to study Byzantine history.

Magical Melons is a children's historical novel by Carol Ryrie Brink, first published in 1939. It is the sequel to the Newbery-Award-winning novel Caddie Woodlawn.

Minions of the Moon is a science fiction novel by American writer William Gray Beyer, originally serialized in the magazine Argosy in 1939. It was published in book form in 1950 by Gnome Press in an edition of 5,000.

Moment in Peking is a novel originally written in English by Chinese author Lin Yutang. The novel, Lin's first, covers the turbulent events in China from 1900 to 1938, including the Boxer Uprising, the Republican Revolution of 1911, the Warlord Era, the rise of nationalism and communism, and the start of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945.

Mountain Cat is a mystery novel by Rex Stout, first published in book form in 1939. The story first appeared in the June 1939 issue of The American Magazine, abridged and titled Dark Revenge.

Night Rider is the first novel by American author Robert Penn Warren. It was published in the United States in 1939.

None but Lucifer is a fantasy novel by American writers Horace L. Gold and L. Sprague de Camp. It was first published in the fantasy magazine Unknown in September 1939, and later serialized in the revival of Galaxy Science Fiction, March-July 1994. Despite its good reception by the readership and the prominence of its authors, the book remained unpublished in book form for over sixty years, until finally issued as a trade paperback by Gateways Retro Science Fiction in 2002. It is also available as an electronic publication.

Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz (1939) is the thirty-third in the series of Oz books created by L. Frank Baum and his successors, and the nineteenth and last written by Ruth Plumly Thompson. It was illustrated by John R. Neill.

Pal Joey is a 1940 epistolary novel by John O'Hara, which became the basis of the 1940 stage musical comedy and 1957 motion picture of the same name, with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart.

The Problem of the Wire Cage, first published in 1939, is a detective story by John Dickson Carr featuring his series detective Gideon Fell. This novel is a mystery of the type known as a locked room mystery.

The Reader is Warned is a mystery novel by the American writer John Dickson Carr, who published it under the name of Carter Dickson. It is a whodunit and features the series detective Sir Henry Merrivale.

The Singing Tree is a children's novel by Kate Seredy, the sequel to The Good Master. Also illustrated by Seredy, it was a Newbery Honor book in 1940. Set in rural Hungary four years after The Good Master, it continues the story of Kate and Jancsi, showing the effect of World War I on the people and land.

Slaves of Sleep is a science fantasy novel by American writer L. Ron Hubbard. It was first published in book form in 1948 by Shasta Publishers; the novel originally appeared in 1939 in an issue of the magazine Unknown. The novel presents a story in which a man travels to a parallel universe ruled by Ifrits. The protagonist takes on the identity of a human in this dimension, and becomes involved in the politics of Ifrits in this fictional "Arabian Nights" world.

Some Buried Caesar is a detective novel by American writer Rex Stout, the sixth book featuring his character Nero Wolfe. The story first appeared in abridged form in The American Magazine, under the title "The Red Bull", it was first published as a novel by Farrar & Rinehart in 1939. In 2000 it was included in the list of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.

Tropic of Capricorn is a semi-autobiographical novel by Henry Miller, first published by Obelisk Press in Paris in 1939. A prequel of sorts to Miller's first published novel, 1934's Tropic of Cancer, it was banned in the United States until a 1961 Justice Department ruling declared that its contents were not obscene.

The Twisted Claw is Volume 18 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap.

Uncle Fred in the Springtime is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on 18 August 1939 by Doubleday, Doran, New York, and in the United Kingdom on 25 August 1939 by Herbert Jenkins, London.

The Web and the Rock is an American bildungsroman novel by Thomas Wolfe, published posthumously in 1939. Like its sequel, You Can't Go Home Again it was extracted by Edward Aswell from a larger manuscript after Wolfe's death.

If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem is a novel by the American author William Faulkner published in 1939. The novel was originally published under the title The Wild Palms, which is the title of one of the two interwoven stories. This title was chosen by the publishers, Random House, over the objections of Faulkner's choice of a title. Subsequent editions have since been printed under the title If I Forget Thee Jerusalem, and since 2003 it is now usually referred to by both names, with the newer title following the historically first published title and in brackets, to avoid confusion: The Wild Palms [If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem].

The Winter Murder Case (1939) is a Philo Vance novella that S. S. Van Dine intended to expand into his twelfth full-length book, a project cut short by his death. The Winter Murder Case seems especially similar to the B mystery movies of the 1930s, a cross between Van Dine's usual style and the film style. It was intended as a vehicle for Sonja Henie.