The continuation novels
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Since Ian Fleming's death in 1964, a number of other authors have written continuation works and kept the literary Bond alive.
The first author was Kingsley Amis, who wrote Colonel Sun under the pseudonym Robert Markham in 1968. Amis had already written the excellent James Bond Dossier in 1965 so had a firm grip of the character, but Colonel Sun sadly turned out to be a one-off. John Pearson was a friend of Fleming who had written The Life of Ian Fleming in 1966. He didn't return to Bond until 1973, when he wrote James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007. This is a fictional work about a retired James Bond, so I will include it here as a continuation novel. Later that decade, Christopher Wood was commissioned to write novelisations of the movies The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979). It wasn't until the 1980s that writer John Gardner was approached by the copyright holders, Ian Fleming Publications, and asked to officially continue the James Bond series. His first novel, Licence Renewed, was published in 1981. Over the next 15 years, Gardner penned a further 13 novels and two novelisations. His final Bond work, Cold, was published in 1996. Gardner gave up writing the Bond novels in the late 1990s as he first suffered serious health issues, and then his wife Margaret unexpectedly died. He did, however, write a series of detective stories at the turn of the millennium, before his death from suspected heart failure in 2007. Raymond Benson, author of the excellent James Bond Bedside Companion (1984) was next to pick up the mantle. After publishing a short story (Blast from the Past, 1997), his first full-length Bond novel was Zero Minus Ten, which came out later the same year. The prolific Benson wrote another five novels, three movie novelisations, and three short stories between then and 2002. After Benson's final Bond novel, The Man with the Red Tattoo (2002), there was another six-year gap before Sebastian Faulks was commissioned to write a one-off novel to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Ian Fleming's birth. Devil May Care was published on May 28, 2008. 
Devil May Care, by Sebastian Faulks, was launched with a wave of publicity.
American author Jeffrey Deaver wrote a contemporary Bond novel, Carte Blanche, in 2011 but this was a one-off.
Scottish writer William Boyd then took Bond back to 1969 for an African civil war story in Solo, published by Jonathan Cape in 2013. The most recent entries in the official Bond series have been two novels by Anthony Horowitz, most famous for his Alex Rider stories. His first book, Trigger Mortis (2015) takes place two weeks after the events of Goldfinger and sees a return to action for Pussy Galore. His second Bond novel, Forever and a Day (2018) is a prequel to Casino Royale and stands as one of the best continuation novels to date. There have also been two Fleming estate-sanctioned spin-off series of books: Young Bond, based around Bond's adventures whilst a schoolboy at Eton College, and The Moneypenny Diaries, a series of books and short stories focusing on the life of Miss Moneypenny. 
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