WThe 13-Storey Treehouse is a 2011 book written by author Andy Griffiths and illustrated by Terry Denton, and a stage play based on the book. The story follows Andy and Terry, who are living in a 13-story treehouse, struggling to finish their book on time among many distractions and their friend Jill, who lives in a house full of animals and often visits them. According to the book, the 13-story treehouse has "a bowling alley, a see-through swimming pool, a tank full of man-eating sharks, a secret underground laboratory, a vegetable vaporizer and a marshmallow machine that shoots marshmallows into your mouths when it sees that you are hungry".
WAngel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived, written by Herman Rosenblat, was a fictitious Holocaust memoir purporting to tell the true story of the author's reunion with, and marriage to, a girl who had passed him food through the barbed-wire fence when he was imprisoned at the Schlieben subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp in World War II. The book was scheduled for publication by Berkley Books in February 2009, but its publication was canceled on December 27, 2008, when it was discovered that the book's central events were untrue.
W"The Balloon-Hoax" is the title used in collections and anthologies of a newspaper article by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1844 in The Sun newspaper in New York. Originally presented as a true story, it detailed European Monck Mason's trip across the Atlantic Ocean in only three days in a gas balloon. It was later revealed as a hoax and the story was retracted two days later.
WThe Diary of Miss Idilia: A Tragic Tale of Young Love Lost is a book edited by Genevieve Hill. It presents itself to be the original diary of a young girl who disappeared whilst on holiday with her parents in the German Rhineland in 1851.
WThe Education of Little Tree is a memoir-style novel written by Asa Earl Carter under the pseudonym Forrest Carter. First published in 1976 by Delacorte Press, it was initially promoted as an authentic autobiography recounting Forrest Carter's youth experiences with his Cherokee grandparents in the Appalachian mountains. However, the book was proven to be a literary hoax orchestrated by Asa Earl Carter, a KKK member from Alabama heavily involved in segregationist causes before he launched his career as a novelist. Although claimed to be autobiographical originally, it is now believed that it is only based on Carter's fanciful but fraudulent family claims.
W"The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" is a short story by the American author Edgar Allan Poe about a mesmerist who puts a man in a suspended hypnotic state at the moment of death. An example of a tale of suspense and horror, it is also to a certain degree a hoax, as it was published without claiming to be fictional, and many at the time of publication (1845) took it to be a factual account. Poe toyed with the idea for a while before he admitted it to be a work of pure fiction in his marginalia.
WGo Ask Alice is a 1971 book about a teenage girl who develops a drug addiction at age 15 and runs away from home on a journey of self-destructive escapism. Attributed to "Anonymous", the book is in diary form, and was originally presented as being the edited "real diary" of the unnamed teenage protagonist. Questions about the book's authenticity and true authorship began to arise in the late 1970s, and it is now generally viewed as a found manuscript-styled fictional work written by Beatrice Sparks, a therapist and author who went on to write numerous other books purporting to be real diaries of troubled teenagers. Some sources have also named Linda Glovach as a co-author of the book. Nevertheless, its popularity has endured, and as of 2014 it had remained continuously in print since its publication over four decades earlier.
WThe "Great Moon Hoax" refers to a series of six articles that were published in The Sun, a New York newspaper, beginning on August 25, 1835, about the supposed discovery of life and even civilization on the Moon. The discoveries were falsely attributed to Sir John Herschel, one of the best-known astronomers of that time.
WJay's Journal is a book presented as an autobiographical account of a depressed teenage boy who becomes involved with a Satanic group. After participating in several occult rituals, "Jay" believes he is being haunted by a demon named Raul. The book is based on "true" events of 16-year-old Alden Barrett from Pleasant Grove, Utah, who committed suicide in 1971.
WA Million Little Pieces is a book by James Frey, originally sold as a memoir and later marketed as a semi-fictional novel following accusations of literary forgery. It tells the story of a 23-year-old alcoholic and abuser of other drugs and how he copes with rehabilitation in a twelve steps-oriented treatment center.
WMisha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years is a literary hoax by Misha Defonseca, first published in 1997. The book was fraudulently published as a memoir telling the supposed true story of how the author survived the Holocaust as a young Jewish girl, wandering Europe searching for her deported parents. The book sold well in several countries and was made into a movie, Survivre avec les loups, named after the claim that Misha was adopted by a pack of wolves during her journey who protected her.
WMother Night is a novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut, first published in February 1962. The title of the book is taken from Goethe's Faust.
WThe Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838) is the only complete novel written by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The work relates the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym, who stows away aboard a whaling ship called the Grampus. Various adventures and misadventures befall Pym, including shipwreck, mutiny, and cannibalism, before he is saved by the crew of the Jane Guy. Aboard this vessel, Pym and a sailor named Dirk Peters continue their adventures farther south. Docking on land, they encounter hostile black-skinned natives before escaping back to the ocean. The novel ends abruptly as Pym and Peters continue toward the South Pole.
WThe Third Eye is a book published by Secker & Warburg in November 1956. It was originally claimed that the book was written by a Tibetan monk named Lobsang Rampa. On investigation the author was found to be one Cyril Henry Hoskin (1910–1981), the son of a British plumber, who claimed that his body was occupied by the spirit of a Tibetan monk named Tuesday Lobsang Rampa. The book is considered a hoax.
WThrough Darkest Pondelayo: An account of the adventures of two English ladies on a cannibal island is a 1936 Australian satirical novel by Joan Lindsay, published under the pseudonym Serena Livingstone-Stanley. The book, which was Lindsay's first-published work, was based on her time spent traveling in Europe, and functions as a parody of English tourists abroad. It is structured in the format of a travel book through a series of first-person letters edited together to form a metafictional narrative.
WFragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood is a 1995 book, whose author used the pseudonym Binjamin Wilkomirski, which purports to be a memoir of the Holocaust. It was debunked by Swiss journalist and writer Daniel Ganzfried in August 1998. The subsequent disclosure of Wilkomirski's fabrications sparked heated debate in the German and English-speaking world. Many critics argued that Fragments no longer had any literary value. Swiss historian and anti-Semitism expert Stefan Maechler later wrote, "Once the professed interrelationship between the first-person narrator, the death-camp story he narrates, and historical reality are proved palpably false, what was a masterpiece becomes kitsch."
WZamba Zembola is the supposed author of an 1847 slave narrative, The Life and Adventures of Zamba, an African Negro King; and his Experience of Slavery in South Carolina, which describes his kidnapping and 40 years of labor as a slave on a plantation in the U.S. state of South Carolina. The work was edited by Peter Neilson, a Scottish abolitionist. Some scholars believe the book is not a genuine slave narrative, but is fiction written by Neilson. Neilson refused to produce Zamba for inspection by anyone else.