These authors wrote popular novels, but for various reasons never published another novel in their lifetime.
An immigrant jeweler goes through a severe case of hero worship as his life intersects with baseball great Christy Mathewson and the New York Giants of John McGraw. The strength of this novel is its meticulous recreation of baseball and New York City in the early part of the 20th century. It has become a cult novel and favorite of baseball fans. Greenberg has contributed to other books on baseball but, to date, has never published another novel.

One of the landmarks of 20th-century literature, this was the only novel that Ellison published in his lifetime. It is the story of an unnamed African-American man who looks back on his brief career and his journey from the Deep South to a basement in Harlem where he has retreated after realizing that he is invisible to society. Ellison's unfinished second novel has been published posthumously as, Three Days Before the Shooting.
While serving on a cargo ship in the Pacific during World War II, Thomas Heggen wrote a series of impressionistic scenes detailing the tedious life aboard a supply ship far from the action. After the war he turned his writings into a novel which became a huge best seller and then a hit Broadway play and movie. Heggen struggled with writer's block while trying to write a second novel and died under mysterious circumstances in 1949.
Maybe the most famous one book author, Lee published To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960. It was an instant bestseller, winning the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961 and was adapted into an Academy Award winning film in 1962. Since the publication of the book Lee has remained reclusive, neither publishing another book nor granting interviews. (As of 2015, Harper Lee is now known for two novels.)