The Catcher in the Rye was J. D. Salinger’s only published novel.
Published by Little, Brown and Company on July 16, 1951, it was Salinger’s first and only full-length novel. The book follows 16-year-old Holden Caulfield over several days in New York City and became the work most closely associated with Salinger’s name.
The wording matters because Salinger did publish other books. Nine Stories, released in 1953, is a short-story collection, while Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction combine stories or novella-length works. None is another conventional novel.
Salinger continued writing after The Catcher in the Rye but became increasingly private and published very little after the 1960s. His later withdrawal can make it seem as though he wrote only one book, but the more precise fact is that he published several books in different forms and only one novel.