Little, Brown Book Group
Encyclopedia
Little, Brown Book Group is a UK publishing company
known for the quality and diversity of its publishing. It was originally established by Charles Coffin Little
and James Brown
in 1837 and called Little, Brown and Company
.
Since 2006 Little, Brown Book Group has been owned by Hachette UK, a subsidiary of Hachette Livre
. The company was sold to Hachette by Time Warner US
who owned Little, Brown UK and USA.
Little, Brown Book Group publishes across the following imprints:
Little, Brown has won the Publisher of the Year Award three times – in 1994, 2004 and 2010.
and James Brown
in 1837, and was bought by Time Inc
in 1968. Little, Brown became part of the Time Warner Book Group when Time merged with Warner Communications
in 1989. Little, Brown USA
bought what became Little, Brown Book Group UK in 1992.
Macdonald and Futura:
Macdonald and Futura was founded in 1938 and Futura was founded in 1973. The Macdonald Futura publishing company was sold to Little, Brown USA in 1992 and the imprint changed to Little, Brown. The paperback imprint then became Warner, and since 2006, Sphere
.
Sphere
was founded in 1967 by the International Thomson Organisation, sold to Penguin
in 1986, then sold to Robert Maxwell
in 1989. In 1992 it was acquired by Little, Brown USA at which time the commercial paperback list was changed to Warner. In 2006 the name reverted back to Sphere.
Under its Sphere imprint, Little, Brown publishes commercial fiction and non-fiction, including crime novels, celebrity autobiographies, romantic comedies and humour. In 2005 the Sphere imprint was nominated for a British Book Award.
Sphere fiction writers include household names such as Patricia Cornwell
, Mark Billingham
, Val McDermid
, Jenny Colgan
and Dorothy Koomson
; rising stars such as Kate Furnivall, Boyd Morrison and Christopher Ransom; and international bestsellers Mitch Albom
, Nicholas Sparks, Carl Hiaasen
and Nicholas Evans
among others.
Sphere non-fiction titles include bestsellers Sharon Osbourne
’s Extreme, Long Way Round by Ewan McGregor
and Charley Boorman
, Ricky by Ricky Tomlinson
, and A Brother’s Journey by Richard B. Pelzer
(all No.1 bestsellers), Scar Tissue
by Anthony Kiedis
, and Is it Just Me or is Everything Shit? by Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur.
Soon after the company’s establishment Little, Brown published a book that exemplifies these qualities - Iain Banks'
The Crow Road
– and all of Banks’ fiction is now published by Little, Brown/Abacus (with his SF in Orbit
). Scotland has in fact proved to be fertile territory for the list as it has also produced both Christopher Brookmyre
(described by one critic as ‘Tartan noir’) and Alexander McCall Smith
(who has been called ‘Tartan blanc’).
In 2004 Alexander McCall Smith won a hat-trick of prizes – the Booksellers Association Award, Waterstone’s Author of the Year Award and Publishing News Author of the Year Award. Little, Brown has now sold over nine million copies of his books, including the No. 1 bestsellers The Miracle at Speedy Motors
and The Double Comfort Safari Club
.
Little, Brown/Abacus also have a distinguished list of American writers, including great names such as Gore Vidal
and E. L. Doctorow
, and brilliant satirists such as David Sedaris
and Candace Bushnell
. It has published the bestselling Anita Shreve
throughout her career.
Little, Brown non-fiction is extremely strong. Young historians Tom Holland
and Juliet Barker
complement Abacus’s publishing of Eric Hobsbawm
, Thomas Pakenham and backlists. 2010 began with two Sunday Times Number 1 bestsellers: Mark Urban
’s Task Force Black and Alistair Urquhart
’s The Forgotten Highlander. Little, Brown has writers as diverse as Tim Harford
, Professor Steve Jones
, Will Hutton
and Evan Davis, and believes it has something wonderful for everybody.
and T.C. McLuhan’s Touch the Earth.
Primo Levi
’s series of masterworks, including If This is a Man
, The Periodic Table and Moments of Reprieve, was soon added and a tradition of bestselling high-quality memoir was established: Nelson Mandela
’s Long Walk to Freedom
; Gore Vidal
’s Palimpsest and Point to Point Navigation; and historian William Woodruff
’s double No. 1 bestsellers The Road to Nab End and Beyond Nab End.
Abacus was one of the first publishers of behavioural economics with the groundbreaking Malcolm Gladwell
book The Tipping Point
, followed by the bestselling Tim Harford
Undercover Economist series. In 2009 Abacus published Gillian Tett
’s award winning work on the financial crisis, Fool’s Gold.
Abacus fiction publishing began with Jane Gardam
. Gardam has twice won the Whitbread Novel Award, part of an excellent Whitbread record that includes Joan Brady
’s Book of the Year for Theory of War, Beryl Bainbridge
’s Novel Award for Every Man for Himself
and Christopher Wilson’s shortlisting for The Ballad of Lee Cotton. Valerie Martin
won the Orange Prize for Property, and in 2009 Simon Mawer
’s The Glass Room was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Abacus publishes some original paperback fiction and non-fiction including José Carlos Somoza
(whose Athenian Murders
' won the CWA Gold Dagger), Guillermo Martínez
, Charlie Connelly
and Michele Giuttari.
is an international publisher that specialises in science fiction
and fantasy books. It was founded in 1974 as part of the Macdonald Futura publishing company. In 1992, its parent company was bought by Little, Brown & Co., at that stage part of the Time Warner Book Group.
In 1997, Orbit acquired the Legend imprint from Random House
.
In summer 2006, it was announced that Orbit would expand internationally, with the establishment of Orbit imprints in the United States and Australia. Orbit Publishing Director Tim Holman relocated to New York to establish Orbit US as an imprint of Hachette Book Group USA. In June 2007, Orbit announced the appointment of Bernadette Foley as publisher for Orbit Australia, an imprint of Hachette Livre Australia.
Some of the authors published by Orbit include the following: Brent Weeks
, R. Scott Bakker
, Terry Brooks
, Jim Butcher
, Jacqueline Carey
, Gail Carriger
, Michael Cobley
, Maggie Furey
, Drew Karpyshyn
, Karen Miller
, Christopher Moore, KJ Parker, Brian Ruckley
, Brandon Sanderson
, Jeff Somers
, Michael J. Sullivan, Robert Jordan
, Joel Shepherd
and Orson Scott Card
.
’s kitchen table in 1973, Virago
has become one of the most successful British publishing imprints and the outstanding international publisher of books by women.
Virginia Woolf
's well known cri de coeur from A Room of One's Own
, 'if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly as we think...' was truly realised in the 1970s. The rise of the Women's Liberation Movement was causing seismic shifts in the march of the world's events; women's creativity and political consciousness was soon to change the face of publishing and literature. Virago owes its inspiration to these times: ` An exciting new imprint for both sexes in a changing world’.
Virago was conceived by Carmen Callil. From 1973 to 1975 it was run by an independently owned editorial imprint by Carmen Callil, Ursula Owen
and Harriet Spicer
. In 1976 Virago became self-financing and independent with capital of just £1,500 and a loan of £10,000. In 1977, inspired by, among other things, Sheila Rowbotham
's Hidden from History, Virago began the Virago Reprint Library, which fed an eager new audience’s desire for women’s history. Then in 1978 the first of the Virago Modern Classics, Frost in May by Antonia White
, was published. It launched a list dedicated to the celebration of women writers and to the rediscovery and reprinting of their works, hugely guided by the influential A Literature of Their Own by Elaine Showalter
. Its aim remains to demonstrate the existence of a female literary tradition and to broaden the sometimes narrow definition of a classic. Published with new introductions by some of today’s best writers, the list encompasses such diverse writers as George Eliot
, Grace Paley
, Elizabeth von Arnim
, Pat Barker
, Edith Wharton
, Mae West
, Angela Carter
, Willa Cather
and Molly Keane
. It has become one of Virago’s most famous hallmarks.
"The Virago Modern Classics have reshaped literary history and enriched the reading of us all. No library is complete without them" Margaret Drabble
In 1982 Virago became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chatto
, Virago, Bodley Head and Cape Group. In 1987 Callil, Lennie Goodings, Ursula Owen, Alexandra Pringle and Harriet Spicer put together a management buy-out from CVBC, then owned by Random House
, USA. The buy-out was financed by Rothschild Ventures and Robert Gavron. Random House UK kept a 10 per cent stake in the company and continued to handle sales and distribution.
In 1993 Rothschild Ventures sold its shares to the directors and Gavron, who thus became the largest single shareholder. In 1996 the directors sold the company to Little, Brown and Lennie Goodings remained as Virago’s Publisher. Virago has flourished under the Little,Brown umbrella to become, today, a brand name and in 2010, won The Bookseller’s Imprint of the Year Award. Lennie Goodings (publisher of Virago) won Editor of the Year.
Virago’s contemporary fiction list includes award-winners and bestsellers including Margaret Atwood
, Marilynne Robinson
, Sarah Waters
, Linda Grant, Sarah Dunant
, Gillian Slovo
, Shirley Hazzard
; from the Man Booker to the Orange Prize for Fiction.
Virago launched its non-fiction list with memoirs and biography – Vera Brittain
’s Testament of Youth
and Maya Angelou
’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
– and continues with the bestselling The Bolter by Frances Osborne
; Lyndall Gordon
’s biography of Emily Dickinson
, Lives Like Loaded Guns; Shirley Williams’ autobiography; and Ingrid Betancourt
’s memoir.
Continuing to publish up-to-date, thought-provoking analysis, Virago has published Natasha Walter
, Joanna Bourke
, Naomi Wolf
, Lisa Appignanesi
and Åsne Seierstad
’s The Bookseller of Kabul
.
but has since become an independent imprint focused on publishing mainstream and supernatural YA fiction.
Atom is best known for publishing worldwide phenomenon Stephenie Meyer
’s Twilight Saga. It is also the UK publisher of many bestselling teen series including P.C
& Kristin Cast
’s House of Night
, Melissa de la Cruz
’s Blue Bloods
, Scott Westerfeld
’s Midnighters and Lisi Harrison’s Monster High
.
Piatkus publishes a range of fiction and non-fiction. Its lifestyle list covers the areas of health; mind, body and spirit; self-help; business; personal development and all the topics that interest people in their daily lives. It includes international authorities such as Patrick Holford
, the UK’s leading nutritionist; bestselling MBS authors Brian Weiss
and Sylvia Browne
; and bestselling business authors Seth Godin
and David Allen
.
Piatkus is also known for its wide variety of fiction, which includes romance, historical fiction, paranormal, supernatural and horror. The fiction list includes Nora Roberts
and her alter-ego, J.D. Robb
, Sherrilyn Kenyon
, Christine Feehan
and Julia Quinn
, and new British authors such as Rosamund Lupton and Carolyn Jess-Cooke
.
Audiobook publishing has historically been an area of great strength for Little, Brown: titles have been acclaimed for the quality of adaptation, readers and packaging. Increasingly, these are available completely unabridged.
Hachette Digital has recorded over 400 audiobooks to date, and has published on CD and as digital downloads
; all titles are available to buy and download from online retailers such as Audible
and iTunes
.
Hachette Digital has had an ebook publishing programme for more than eight years, but demand for ebooks is now higher than ever. There are ongoing plans for digitisation, across both front and backlist titles, and there are currently more than a thousand titles available as ebooks.
Hachette Digital titles are available from the major UK ebook retailers, including the Amazon’s Kindle store, Waterstones, WHSmith and Apple
’s iBookstore. Hachette Digital has a number of enhanced titles available as apps for the iPhone
, iPod Touch
, iPad
and other devices.
Publishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
known for the quality and diversity of its publishing. It was originally established by Charles Coffin Little
Charles Coffin Little
Charles Coffin Little was a U.S. publisher. He is best known for co-founding Little, Brown and Company with James Brown.-Biography:Little arrived in Boston early in life...
and James Brown
James Brown (publisher)
James Brown was an American publisher and co-founder of Little, Brown and Company.-Biography:Brown was born in Acton, Massachusetts. He started his working life was as a servant in the family of Prof. Hedge, of Cambridge, by whom he was instructed in the classics and in mathematics. Around 1832,...
in 1837 and called Little, Brown and Company
Little, Brown and Company
Little, Brown and Company is a publishing house established by Charles Coffin Little and his partner, James Brown. Since 2006 it has been a constituent unit of Hachette Book Group USA.-19th century:...
.
Since 2006 Little, Brown Book Group has been owned by Hachette UK, a subsidiary of Hachette Livre
Hachette Livre
-France:*Calmann-Lévy*Deux Coqs d'Or*Disney Hachette Edition*EDICEF*Editions 1*Editions du Chêne**E.P.A*Éditions Dunod*Editions Foucher*Editions Stock*Fayard**Editions Mille et Une Nuits**Editions Mazarine**Pauvert*Gautier-Languereau*Grasset...
. The company was sold to Hachette by Time Warner US
Time Warner
Time Warner is one of the world's largest media companies, headquartered in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Formerly two separate companies, Warner Communications, Inc...
who owned Little, Brown UK and USA.
Little, Brown Book Group publishes across the following imprints:
- Little, Brown
- SphereSphere Books-History:Founded in 1961, Sphere Books began work on its first publication, the 1962 paperback edition of Gottfried Benn's The Trainee Man. Originally part of The Thomson Corporation, Sphere was sold to Pearson PLC in 1985 and became part of Penguin...
- Abacus
- ViragoVirago PressVirago is a British publishing company founded in 1973 by Carmen Callil to publish books by women writers. Both new works and reissued books by neglected authors have featured on the imprint's list....
- OrbitOrbit BooksOrbit Books is an international publisher that specialises in science fiction and fantasy books. It was founded in 1974 as part of the Macdonald Futura publishing company...
- Atom
- Piatkus
- Hachette Digital
Little, Brown has won the Publisher of the Year Award three times – in 1994, 2004 and 2010.
History
Little, Brown was established in Boston by Charles LittleCharles Coffin Little
Charles Coffin Little was a U.S. publisher. He is best known for co-founding Little, Brown and Company with James Brown.-Biography:Little arrived in Boston early in life...
and James Brown
James Brown (publisher)
James Brown was an American publisher and co-founder of Little, Brown and Company.-Biography:Brown was born in Acton, Massachusetts. He started his working life was as a servant in the family of Prof. Hedge, of Cambridge, by whom he was instructed in the classics and in mathematics. Around 1832,...
in 1837, and was bought by Time Inc
Time Warner
Time Warner is one of the world's largest media companies, headquartered in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Formerly two separate companies, Warner Communications, Inc...
in 1968. Little, Brown became part of the Time Warner Book Group when Time merged with Warner Communications
Warner Communications
Warner Communications or Warner Communications, Inc. was established in 1971 when Kinney National Company spun off its non-entertainment assets, due to a financial scandal over its parking operations and changed its name....
in 1989. Little, Brown USA
Little, Brown and Company
Little, Brown and Company is a publishing house established by Charles Coffin Little and his partner, James Brown. Since 2006 it has been a constituent unit of Hachette Book Group USA.-19th century:...
bought what became Little, Brown Book Group UK in 1992.
Macdonald and Futura:
Macdonald and Futura was founded in 1938 and Futura was founded in 1973. The Macdonald Futura publishing company was sold to Little, Brown USA in 1992 and the imprint changed to Little, Brown. The paperback imprint then became Warner, and since 2006, Sphere
Sphere Books
-History:Founded in 1961, Sphere Books began work on its first publication, the 1962 paperback edition of Gottfried Benn's The Trainee Man. Originally part of The Thomson Corporation, Sphere was sold to Pearson PLC in 1985 and became part of Penguin...
.
Imprints
SphereSphere
Sphere Books
-History:Founded in 1961, Sphere Books began work on its first publication, the 1962 paperback edition of Gottfried Benn's The Trainee Man. Originally part of The Thomson Corporation, Sphere was sold to Pearson PLC in 1985 and became part of Penguin...
was founded in 1967 by the International Thomson Organisation, sold to Penguin
Penguin Group
The Penguin Group is a trade book publisher, the largest in the world , having overtaken Random House in 2009. The Penguin Group is the name of the incorporated division of parent Pearson PLC that oversees these publishing operations...
in 1986, then sold to Robert Maxwell
Robert Maxwell
Ian Robert Maxwell MC was a Czechoslovakian-born British media proprietor and former Member of Parliament , who rose from poverty to build an extensive publishing empire...
in 1989. In 1992 it was acquired by Little, Brown USA at which time the commercial paperback list was changed to Warner. In 2006 the name reverted back to Sphere.
Under its Sphere imprint, Little, Brown publishes commercial fiction and non-fiction, including crime novels, celebrity autobiographies, romantic comedies and humour. In 2005 the Sphere imprint was nominated for a British Book Award.
Sphere fiction writers include household names such as Patricia Cornwell
Patricia Cornwell
Patricia Cornwell is a contemporary American crime writer. She is widely known for writing a popular series of novels featuring the heroine Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a medical examiner.-Early life:...
, Mark Billingham
Mark Billingham
Mark Philip David Billingham is an English novelist whose series of "Tom Thorne" crime novels are best-sellers in that particular genre. He is also a television screenwriter and has become a familiar face as an actor and comic....
, Val McDermid
Val McDermid
Val McDermid is a Scottish crime writer, best known for a series of suspense novels starring her most famous creation, Dr. Tony Hill.-Biography:...
, Jenny Colgan
Jenny Colgan
Jenny Colgan is a British chick-lit novelist, author of romantic comedies such as "Amanda's Wedding", "Looking for Andrew McCarthy" and most recently "The Good,the Bad and the Dumped"...
and Dorothy Koomson
Dorothy Koomson
Dorothy Koomson is a contemporary English novelist.Koomson has two degrees in Psychology and Journalism when she graduated from Leeds University. She has written for a number of women's magazines and newspapers, not to mention writing 7 successful novels being published in the UK and US...
; rising stars such as Kate Furnivall, Boyd Morrison and Christopher Ransom; and international bestsellers Mitch Albom
Mitch Albom
Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom is an American best-selling author, journalist, screenwriter, dramatist, radio and television broadcaster and musician. His books have sold over 30 million copies worldwide...
, Nicholas Sparks, Carl Hiaasen
Carl Hiaasen
Carl Hiaasen is an American journalist, columnist and novelist.- Early years :Born in 1953 and raised in Plantation, Florida, of Norwegian heritage, Hiaasen was the first of four children and the son of a lawyer, Kermit Odel, and teacher, Patricia...
and Nicholas Evans
Nicholas Evans
Nicholas Evans is an English journalist, screenwriter television and film producer and novelist. Evans was born at in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, and educated at Bromsgrove School but before studying at Oxford University, he served in Africa with the charity Voluntary Service Overseas...
among others.
Sphere non-fiction titles include bestsellers Sharon Osbourne
Sharon Osbourne
Sharon Rachel Osbourne is an English television host, author, music manager, businesswoman and promoter as well as the wife of heavy metal singer-songwriter Ozzy Osbourne....
’s Extreme, Long Way Round by Ewan McGregor
Ewan McGregor
Ewan Gordon McGregor is a Scottish actor. He has had success in mainstream, indie, and art house films. McGregor is perhaps best known for his roles as heroin addict Mark Renton in the drama Trainspotting , young Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy , and poet Christian in the...
and Charley Boorman
Charley Boorman
Charley Boorman is an English TV adventurer, travel writer and actor. He is well known for his association with motorcycles and enthusiasm for biking.-Education:...
, Ricky by Ricky Tomlinson
Ricky Tomlinson
Eric Tomlinson , known by his stage name Ricky Tomlinson, is an English actor and comedian, best known for his roles as Bobby Grant in Brookside, DCI Charlie Wise in Cracker and James "Jim" Royle in The Royle Family....
, and A Brother’s Journey by Richard B. Pelzer
Richard B. Pelzer
Richard Bryan Pelzer is an American public speaker, memoirist and author. Pelzer is the fourth of five sons of Stephen Pelzer and Catherine Roerva...
(all No.1 bestsellers), Scar Tissue
Scar Tissue (book)
Scar Tissue is the autobiography of Red Hot Chili Peppers vocalist Anthony Kiedis. It was released in 2004 by Hyperion and authored by Kiedis with Larry Sloman, who compiled information and interviewed various parties associated with the plot line. The story follows Kiedis from his birth in 1962 to...
by Anthony Kiedis
Anthony Kiedis
Anthony Kiedis is an American vocalist/lyricist, and occasional actor best known as the lead vocalist of the Grammy-winning American rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers. Kiedis spent his youth in Grand Rapids, Michigan with his mother before moving, shortly before his 12th birthday, to Hollywood,...
, and Is it Just Me or is Everything Shit? by Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur.
Little, Brown
Little, Brown is the literary hardback imprint that feeds into Abacus paperback. It publishes across a wide range of areas, including fiction, history, memoir, science and travel, but within this diverse list the vast majority of books have in common a strong narrative and a distinctive voice.Soon after the company’s establishment Little, Brown published a book that exemplifies these qualities - Iain Banks'
Iain Banks
Iain Banks is a Scottish writer. He writes mainstream fiction under the name Iain Banks, and science fiction as Iain M. Banks, including the initial of his adopted middle name Menzies...
The Crow Road
The Crow Road
The Crow Road is a novel by the Scottish writer Iain Banks, published in 1992.-Plot introduction:Prentice McHoan's life, growing up in a complex but coherent Scottish family with many mysteries is described, seen through his preoccupations with death, sex, relationships, drink and God, with the...
– and all of Banks’ fiction is now published by Little, Brown/Abacus (with his SF in Orbit
Orbit Books
Orbit Books is an international publisher that specialises in science fiction and fantasy books. It was founded in 1974 as part of the Macdonald Futura publishing company...
). Scotland has in fact proved to be fertile territory for the list as it has also produced both Christopher Brookmyre
Christopher Brookmyre
Christopher Brookmyre is a Scottish novelist whose novels mix comedy, politics, social comment and action with a strong narrative. He has been referred to as a Tartan Noir author...
(described by one critic as ‘Tartan noir’) and Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander "Sandy" McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE, is a Rhodesian-born Scottish writer and Emeritus Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. In the late 20th century, McCall Smith became a respected expert on medical law and bioethics and served on British and international committees...
(who has been called ‘Tartan blanc’).
In 2004 Alexander McCall Smith won a hat-trick of prizes – the Booksellers Association Award, Waterstone’s Author of the Year Award and Publishing News Author of the Year Award. Little, Brown has now sold over nine million copies of his books, including the No. 1 bestsellers The Miracle at Speedy Motors
The Miracle at Speedy Motors
The Miracle at Speedy Motors is the ninth in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith, set in Gaborone, Botswana, and featuring the Motswana protagonist Precious Ramotswe.-Plot summary:...
and The Double Comfort Safari Club
The Double Comfort Safari Club
The Double Comfort Safari Club is the eleventh in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith, set in Gaborone, Botswana, and featuring the Motswana protagonist Precious Ramotswe.-Plot summary:...
.
Little, Brown/Abacus also have a distinguished list of American writers, including great names such as Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
and E. L. Doctorow
E. L. Doctorow
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow is an American author.- Biography :Edgar Lawrence Doctorow was born in the Bronx, New York City, the son of second-generation Americans of Russian Jewish descent...
, and brilliant satirists such as David Sedaris
David Sedaris
David Sedaris is a Grammy Award-nominated American humorist, writer, comedian, bestselling author, and radio contributor....
and Candace Bushnell
Candace Bushnell
Candace Bushnell is an American author and columnist based in New York City. She is best known for writing a column that was anthologized in a book, Sex and the City, which in turn became the basis for a popular television series and its subsequent film adaptations.-Personal life:Bushnell was born...
. It has published the bestselling Anita Shreve
Anita Shreve
Anita Shreve is an American writer. The daughter of an airline pilot and a homemaker, she graduated from Dedham High School, attended Tufts University and began writing while working as a high school teacher in Reading MA. One of her first published stories, Past the Island, Drifting, was awarded...
throughout her career.
Little, Brown non-fiction is extremely strong. Young historians Tom Holland
Tom Holland (author)
-Biography:Holland was born near Oxford and brought up in the village of Broadchalke near Salisbury, England. His younger brother is the historian and novelist James Holland...
and Juliet Barker
Juliet Barker
Juliet R. V. Barker FRSL is a British historian, specialising in the Middle Ages and literary biography. She is the author of a number of well-regarded works on the Brontës, William Wordsworth, and medieval tournaments...
complement Abacus’s publishing of Eric Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawm
Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm , CH, FBA, is a British Marxist historian, public intellectual, and author...
, Thomas Pakenham and backlists. 2010 began with two Sunday Times Number 1 bestsellers: Mark Urban
Mark Urban
Mark Urban is a British journalist, author, broadcaster and orientalist, and is currently the Diplomatic Editor for BBC Two's Newsnight.-Education and early career:...
’s Task Force Black and Alistair Urquhart
Alistair Urquhart
Alistair Urquhart is a retired Scottish businessman. He was born in the City of Aberdeen, but has resided in Broughty Ferry, Dundee for many years. He spends his retirement teaching retired people how to use the computer and attends and teaches ballroom dancing at many Tea Dances...
’s The Forgotten Highlander. Little, Brown has writers as diverse as Tim Harford
Tim Harford
Tim Harford is an English economist and journalist, residing in London. He is the author of four economics books, presenter of BBC television series Trust Me, I'm an Economist, and writer of a humorous weekly column called "Dear Economist" for The Financial Times, in which he uses economic theory...
, Professor Steve Jones
Steve Jones (biologist)
John Stephen Jones is a Welsh geneticist and from 1995 to 1999 and 2008 to June 2010 was Head of the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London. His studies are conducted in the Galton Laboratory. He is also a television presenter and a prize-winning author on...
, Will Hutton
Will Hutton
William Nicolas Hutton is an English writer, weekly columnist and former editor-in-chief for The Observer. He is currently Principal of Hertford College, Oxford and Chair of the Big Innovation Centre , an initiative from The Work Foundation , having been Chief Executive of The Work Foundation from...
and Evan Davis, and believes it has something wonderful for everybody.
Abacus
Abacus was founded in 1973 as part of Sphere. In the early days it was strictly a non-fiction list with something of an ecological flavour, producing classics such as E.F. Schumacher’s Small is BeautifulSmall Is Beautiful
Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered is a collection of essays by British economist E. F. Schumacher. The phrase "Small Is Beautiful" came from a phrase by his teacher Leopold Kohr...
and T.C. McLuhan’s Touch the Earth.
Primo Levi
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist and writer. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems, but is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland...
’s series of masterworks, including If This is a Man
If This Is a Man
If This Is a Man is a work by the Italian writer, Primo Levi, describing his 11 months—from February 21, 1944 until liberation on January 27, 1945—in the German concentration camp at Auschwitz in Poland, during the Second World War...
, The Periodic Table and Moments of Reprieve, was soon added and a tradition of bestselling high-quality memoir was established: Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
’s Long Walk to Freedom
Long Walk to Freedom
Long Walk to Freedom is an autobiographical work written by Nelson Mandela, and published in 1995 by Little Brown & Co. The book profiles his early life, coming of age, education and 27 years in prison. Mandela was once regarded as a terrorist but he is now regarded as uncontroversial...
; Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
’s Palimpsest and Point to Point Navigation; and historian William Woodruff
William Woodruff
William Woodruff was a professor of world history, but perhaps most noted for his two autobiographical works: The Road to Nab End and its sequel Beyond Nab End; both became bestsellers in the United Kingdom...
’s double No. 1 bestsellers The Road to Nab End and Beyond Nab End.
Abacus was one of the first publishers of behavioural economics with the groundbreaking Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell, CM is a Canadian journalist, bestselling author, and speaker. He is currently based in New York City and has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996...
book The Tipping Point
The Tipping Point
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference is a book by Malcolm Gladwell, first published by Little Brown in 2000....
, followed by the bestselling Tim Harford
Tim Harford
Tim Harford is an English economist and journalist, residing in London. He is the author of four economics books, presenter of BBC television series Trust Me, I'm an Economist, and writer of a humorous weekly column called "Dear Economist" for The Financial Times, in which he uses economic theory...
Undercover Economist series. In 2009 Abacus published Gillian Tett
Gillian Tett
Gillian Tett is a British author and award-winning journalist at the Financial Times, where she is the US managing editor She has written about the financial instruments that were part of the cause of the financial crisis that started in the fourth quarter of 2007, such as CDOs, credit default...
’s award winning work on the financial crisis, Fool’s Gold.
Abacus fiction publishing began with Jane Gardam
Jane Gardam
Jane Mary Gardam OBE is a British author of children's and adult fiction. She also reviews for the Spectator and the Telegraph, and writes for BBC radio, where her current project is six programmes on the suburbs. She lives in Kent, Wimbledon, and Yorkshire. She has won numerous literary awards,...
. Gardam has twice won the Whitbread Novel Award, part of an excellent Whitbread record that includes Joan Brady
Joan Brady
Joan Brady is a writer. She is the first woman, and so far the only American, to win the prestigious Whitbread Book of the Year Award. Other winners include Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes.-Personal life:...
’s Book of the Year for Theory of War, Beryl Bainbridge
Beryl Bainbridge
Dame Beryl Margaret Bainbridge, DBE was an English author from Liverpool. She was primarily known for her psychological novels, often set amongst the English working classes. Bainbridge won the Whitbread Awards prize for best novel in 1977 and 1996; she was nominated five times for the Booker...
’s Novel Award for Every Man for Himself
Every Man for Himself
Every Man for Himself is the third album by Hoobastank. It was released on May 16, 2006, and May 8 of the same year in the UK. The first single is "If I Were You"...
and Christopher Wilson’s shortlisting for The Ballad of Lee Cotton. Valerie Martin
Valerie Martin
Valerie Martin is an American novelist and short story writer. She has also taught at Mount Holyoke College, Loyola University New Orleans, The University of New Orleans, The University of Alabama, and Sarah Lawrence College, among other institutions. She is a graduate of the MFA Program for...
won the Orange Prize for Property, and in 2009 Simon Mawer
Simon Mawer
Simon Mawer is a British author who currently lives in Italy.-Life and work:Educated at Millfield School in Somerset and at Brasenose College, Oxford, Mawer took a degree in Zoology and has worked as a biology teacher for most of his life. He published his first novel, Chimera, at the...
’s The Glass Room was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Abacus publishes some original paperback fiction and non-fiction including José Carlos Somoza
José Carlos Somoza
José Carlos Somoza is a Spanish author born on November 13, 1959 in Havana, Cuba. In 1960 his family moved to Spain after being exiled for political reasons...
(whose Athenian Murders
The Athenian Murders
The Athenian Murders is a novel written by Spanish author José Carlos Somoza. Originally published in Spain under the title La caverna de las ideas in 2000, it was translated into English in 2002 by Sonia Soto...
' won the CWA Gold Dagger), Guillermo Martínez
Guillermo Martínez
Guillermo Martínez is an Argentine novelist and short story writer.Martínez was born in Bahía Blanca, Argentina. He gained a PhD in mathematical logic at the University of Buenos Aires....
, Charlie Connelly
Charlie Connelly
Charlie Connelly is an author and broadcaster. Connelly began his career as a writer of books relating to sporting events, most commonly football. His breakthrough 2002 book, Stamping Grounds, was his fifth, and followed the Liechtenstein national football team in their unsuccessful campaign to...
and Michele Giuttari.
Orbit
OrbitOrbit Books
Orbit Books is an international publisher that specialises in science fiction and fantasy books. It was founded in 1974 as part of the Macdonald Futura publishing company...
is an international publisher that specialises in science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
and fantasy books. It was founded in 1974 as part of the Macdonald Futura publishing company. In 1992, its parent company was bought by Little, Brown & Co., at that stage part of the Time Warner Book Group.
In 1997, Orbit acquired the Legend imprint from Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
.
In summer 2006, it was announced that Orbit would expand internationally, with the establishment of Orbit imprints in the United States and Australia. Orbit Publishing Director Tim Holman relocated to New York to establish Orbit US as an imprint of Hachette Book Group USA. In June 2007, Orbit announced the appointment of Bernadette Foley as publisher for Orbit Australia, an imprint of Hachette Livre Australia.
Some of the authors published by Orbit include the following: Brent Weeks
Brent Weeks
Brent Weeks, born , is an American author living and writing in Oregon. Born in Montana, Weeks graduated from Hillsdale College with a degree in English. After brief stints teaching and bar tending, he devoted himself to writing full time....
, R. Scott Bakker
R. Scott Bakker
Richard Scott Bakker is a Canadian fantasy author. He grew up on a tobacco farm in the Simcoe area. In 1986 he attended the University of Western Ontario to pursue a degree in Literature and later an MA in Theory and Criticism...
, Terry Brooks
Terry Brooks
Terence Dean "Terry" Brooks is an American writer of fantasy fiction. He writes mainly epic fantasy, and has also written two movie novelizations. He has written 23 New York Times bestsellers during his writing career, and has over 21 million copies of his books in print...
, Jim Butcher
Jim Butcher
Jim Butcher is a New York Times Best Selling author most known for his contemporary fantasy book series The Dresden Files. He also wrote the Codex Alera series. Butcher grew up as the only son of his parents, and has two older sisters. He currently lives in Independence with his wife, Shannon K...
, Jacqueline Carey
Jacqueline Carey
Jacqueline Carey is an author and novelist, primarily of fantasy fiction.-Life:She attended Lake Forest College, receiving B.A.'s in psychology and English literature. During college, she spent 6 months working in a bookstore in London as part of a work exchange program. While there, she decided...
, Gail Carriger
Gail Carriger
Gail Carriger is the pen name of Tofa Borregaard, an archaeologist and author of steampunk fiction. She was born in Bolinas, an unincorporated community in Marin County, California, and attended high school at Marin Academy...
, Michael Cobley
Michael Cobley
Michael Cobley, born on 10 October 1959, is a science fiction and fantasy author born in Leicester, England but living since the age of seven in Glasgow, Scotland.-Life:Michael Cobley was born in Leicester but moved to Glasgow at the age of seven....
, Maggie Furey
Maggie Furey
Maggie Furey was born in Northeast England, UK, in 1955. She is a qualified teacher but has also reviewed books on BBC Radio Newcastle, been an advisor in the Durham Reading Resources Centre and organized children's book fairs. She now lives in County Wicklow in Ireland...
, Drew Karpyshyn
Drew Karpyshyn
Drew Karpyshyn is a Canadian video game scenario writer, scriptwriter and novelist.-Career:Karpyshyn was a loan officer, but when he got in a car accident, he quit his job as a loan officer and was able to go to college again to gain a degree in English...
, Karen Miller
Karen Miller
Karen Miller is an Australian writer.Miller was born in Vancouver, Canada and moved to Australia at the age of two. After graduating from the Sydney University of Technology she moved to England for three years before moving back to Australia...
, Christopher Moore, KJ Parker, Brian Ruckley
Brian Ruckley
Brian Ruckley is a Scottish fantasy writer. He is the author of The Godless World trilogy: Winterbirth, Bloodheir, and Fall of Thanes.-Biography:...
, Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson is an American fantasy author. A Nebraska native, he currently resides in American Fork, Utah. He earned his Master's degree in Creative Writing in 2005 from Brigham Young University, where he was on the staff of Leading Edge, a semi-professional speculative fiction magazine...
, Jeff Somers
Jeff Somers
-Literary career:Since 1995, Somers has published his zine The Inner Swine and has been a prolific contributor to alt.zines. The 21st century has seen Somers's transformation from an observational essayist into a science fiction writer of no small talent, "a gifted craftsman" with a "funky wit." ...
, Michael J. Sullivan, Robert Jordan
Robert Jordan
Robert Jordan was the pen name of James Oliver Rigney, Jr. , under which he was best known as the author of the bestselling The Wheel of Time fantasy series. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Reagan O'Neal and Jackson O'Reilly.-Biography:Jordan was born in Charleston, South Carolina...
, Joel Shepherd
Joel Shepherd
Joel Shepherd is an Australian science fiction author. He moved to Perth, Western Australia with his family when he was seven, where he later studied film and television arts at Curtin University....
and Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card is an American author, critic, public speaker, essayist, columnist, and political activist. He writes in several genres, but is primarily known for his science fiction. His novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the...
.
Virago
Nearly 40 years on from its beginnings around Carmen CallilCarmen Callil
Carmen Thérèse Callil is a publisher, writer and critic. She founded Virago Press in 1973.-Life:Callil was born in Melbourne Australia, but has lived in London since 1960. Her mother Lorraine Clare Allen, widowed in her early forties, raised four children of whom Carmen was the third...
’s kitchen table in 1973, Virago
Virago Press
Virago is a British publishing company founded in 1973 by Carmen Callil to publish books by women writers. Both new works and reissued books by neglected authors have featured on the imprint's list....
has become one of the most successful British publishing imprints and the outstanding international publisher of books by women.
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
's well known cri de coeur from A Room of One's Own
A Room of One's Own
A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928...
, 'if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly as we think...' was truly realised in the 1970s. The rise of the Women's Liberation Movement was causing seismic shifts in the march of the world's events; women's creativity and political consciousness was soon to change the face of publishing and literature. Virago owes its inspiration to these times: ` An exciting new imprint for both sexes in a changing world’.
Virago was conceived by Carmen Callil. From 1973 to 1975 it was run by an independently owned editorial imprint by Carmen Callil, Ursula Owen
Ursula Owen
Ursula Margaret Sachs is a publisher, editor and campaigner for free expression.-Early life:She was born Ursula Margaret Sachs in Oxford, England, to Emma Boehm and Werner Sachs, a chemical engineer who became managing director of a multinational company dealing with non ferrous metals...
and Harriet Spicer
Harriet Spicer
Harriet Greville Spicer is a lay member of the Judicial Appointments Commission. She was born on 24 April 1950 to James Spicer, the then owner of Spicer's Paper and Patricia Palmer. She lived in Chelsea before attending Lillsden School for Girls and then Benenden School. In 1968 she spent some time...
. In 1976 Virago became self-financing and independent with capital of just £1,500 and a loan of £10,000. In 1977, inspired by, among other things, Sheila Rowbotham
Sheila Rowbotham
Sheila Rowbotham is a British socialist feminist theorist and writer.-Early life:Rowbotham was born in Leeds, the daughter of a salesman for an engineering company and an office clerk From an early age, she was deeply interested in history...
's Hidden from History, Virago began the Virago Reprint Library, which fed an eager new audience’s desire for women’s history. Then in 1978 the first of the Virago Modern Classics, Frost in May by Antonia White
Antonia White
Antonia White was a British writer.-Early life:White was born as Eirine Botting to parents Cecil and Christine Botting. She later took her mother's maiden name, White. Her father taught Greek and Latin at St. Paul’s School...
, was published. It launched a list dedicated to the celebration of women writers and to the rediscovery and reprinting of their works, hugely guided by the influential A Literature of Their Own by Elaine Showalter
Elaine Showalter
Elaine Showalter is an American literary critic, feminist, and writer on cultural and social issues. She is one of the founders of feminist literary criticism in United States academia, developing the concept and practice of gynocritics.She is well known and respected in both academic and popular...
. Its aim remains to demonstrate the existence of a female literary tradition and to broaden the sometimes narrow definition of a classic. Published with new introductions by some of today’s best writers, the list encompasses such diverse writers as George Eliot
George Eliot
Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...
, Grace Paley
Grace Paley
Grace Paley was an American-Jewish short story writer, poet, and political activist.-Biography:Grace Paley was born in the Bronx to Isaac and Manya Ridnyik Goodside, who anglicized the family name from Gutseit on immigrating from Ukraine. Her father was a doctor. The family spoke Russian and...
, Elizabeth von Arnim
Elizabeth von Arnim
Elizabeth von Arnim , born Mary Annette Beauchamp, was an Australian-born British novelist. By marriage she became Gräfin von Arnim-Schlagenthin, and by a second marriage, Countess Russell...
, Pat Barker
Pat Barker
Pat Barker CBE, FRSL is an English writer and novelist. She has won many awards for her fiction, which centres around themes of memory, trauma, survival and recovery. Her work is described as direct, blunt and plainspoken.-Personal life:...
, Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton , was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.- Early life and marriage:...
, Mae West
Mae West
Mae West was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades....
, Angela Carter
Angela Carter
Angela Carter was an English novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works...
, Willa Cather
Willa Cather
Willa Seibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours , a novel set during World War I...
and Molly Keane
Molly Keane
Molly Keane was an Irish novelist and playwright . She grew up at Ballyrankin in County Wexford and was educated at a boarding school in Bray, County Wicklow . She married Bobby Keane, one of a Waterford squirearchical family in 1938 and had two daughters...
. It has become one of Virago’s most famous hallmarks.
"The Virago Modern Classics have reshaped literary history and enriched the reading of us all. No library is complete without them" Margaret Drabble
In 1982 Virago became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chatto
Chatto
Chatto may refer to:* Chatto , Chiricahua Apache chief* Beth Chatto , plantswoman, garden designer and author* Virendranath Chattopadhyaya , prominent Bengali Indian revolutionary...
, Virago, Bodley Head and Cape Group. In 1987 Callil, Lennie Goodings, Ursula Owen, Alexandra Pringle and Harriet Spicer put together a management buy-out from CVBC, then owned by Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
, USA. The buy-out was financed by Rothschild Ventures and Robert Gavron. Random House UK kept a 10 per cent stake in the company and continued to handle sales and distribution.
In 1993 Rothschild Ventures sold its shares to the directors and Gavron, who thus became the largest single shareholder. In 1996 the directors sold the company to Little, Brown and Lennie Goodings remained as Virago’s Publisher. Virago has flourished under the Little,Brown umbrella to become, today, a brand name and in 2010, won The Bookseller’s Imprint of the Year Award. Lennie Goodings (publisher of Virago) won Editor of the Year.
Virago’s contemporary fiction list includes award-winners and bestsellers including Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...
, Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson
-Biography:Robinson was born and grew up in Sandpoint, Idaho, and did her undergraduate work at Pembroke College, the former women's college at Brown University, receiving her B.A., magna cum laude in 1966, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received her Ph.D...
, Sarah Waters
Sarah Waters
Sarah Waters is a British novelist. She is best known for her novels set in Victorian society, such as Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith.-Childhood:Sarah Waters was born in Neyland, Pembrokeshire, Wales in 1966....
, Linda Grant, Sarah Dunant
Sarah Dunant
Sarah Dunant is the author of many international bestsellers, most recently Sacred Hearts, the completion of her Italian historical trilogy....
, Gillian Slovo
Gillian Slovo
Gillian Slovo is a South African born novelist, playwright and memoirist.Her novels were at first predominantly of the crime and thriller genres, including a series featuring the detective Kate Baeier but she has since written more literary fiction...
, Shirley Hazzard
Shirley Hazzard
Shirley Hazzard is an Australian author of fiction and nonfiction. She was born in Australia, but holds citizenship in Great Britain and the United States...
; from the Man Booker to the Orange Prize for Fiction.
Virago launched its non-fiction list with memoirs and biography – Vera Brittain
Vera Brittain
Vera Mary Brittain was a British writer, feminist and pacifist, best remembered as the author of the best-selling 1933 memoir Testament of Youth, recounting her experiences during World War I and the beginning of her journey towards pacifism.-Life:Born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Brittain was the...
’s Testament of Youth
Testament of Youth
Testament of Youth is the first installment, covering 1900–1925, in the memoir of Vera Brittain . It was published in 1933. Brittain's memoir continues with Testament of Experience, published in 1957, and encompassing the years 1925–1950...
and Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou is an American author and poet who has been called "America's most visible black female autobiographer" by scholar Joanne M. Braxton. She is best known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first and most highly...
’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the 1969 autobiography about the early years of African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou. The first in a six-volume series, it is a coming-of-age story that illustrates how strength of character and a love of literature can help overcome racism and trauma...
– and continues with the bestselling The Bolter by Frances Osborne
Frances Osborne
Frances Osborne is a British author. She is the eldest daughter of former and current Conservative Cabinet Minister David Howell, Baron Howell of Guildford and Cary Davina Wallace....
; Lyndall Gordon
Lyndall Gordon
Lyndall Gordon is a South African writer and academic, known for her literary biographies. Born in Cape Town, she was an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town, then a doctoral student at Columbia University...
’s biography of Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...
, Lives Like Loaded Guns; Shirley Williams’ autobiography; and Ingrid Betancourt
Íngrid Betancourt
Ingrid Betancourt Pulecio is a Colombian politician, former senator and anti-corruption activist.Betancourt was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia on 23 February 2002 and was rescued by Colombian security forces six and a half years later on 2 July 2008...
’s memoir.
Continuing to publish up-to-date, thought-provoking analysis, Virago has published Natasha Walter
Natasha Walter
Natasha Walter is a British feminist writer and human rights activist. She is the author of Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism and The New Feminism , and is the director of Women for Refugee Women ....
, Joanna Bourke
Joanna Bourke
Joanna Bourke is an historian and professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London.-Biography:Born to Christian missionary parents, Bourke was brought up in Zambia, Solomon Islands and Haiti. After home education with her siblings she attended Auckland University, gaining a BA and masters in...
, Naomi Wolf
Naomi Wolf
Naomi Wolf is an American author and political consultant. With the publication of The Beauty Myth, she became a leading spokesperson of what was later described as the third wave of the feminist movement.-Biography:...
, Lisa Appignanesi
Lisa Appignanesi
Lisa Appignanesi is a British writer, novelist, and campaigner for free expression. She is president of the writers’ organization English PEN. Her latest book is All About Love: Anatomy of an Unruly Emotion...
and Åsne Seierstad
Åsne Seierstad
Åsne Seierstad is a Norwegian freelance journalist and writer, best known for her accounts of everyday life in war zones - most notably Kabul after 2001, Baghdad in 2003 and the ruined Grozny in 2006.-Personal and professional life:...
’s The Bookseller of Kabul
The Bookseller of Kabul
The Bookseller of Kabul is a non-fiction book written by Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad, about a bookseller, Shah Muhammad Rais , and his family in Kabul, Afghanistan...
.
Atom
Atom is the young adult imprint of Little, Brown Book Group. It was founded in 2002 within the science fiction and fantasy imprint of OrbitOrbit Books
Orbit Books is an international publisher that specialises in science fiction and fantasy books. It was founded in 1974 as part of the Macdonald Futura publishing company...
but has since become an independent imprint focused on publishing mainstream and supernatural YA fiction.
Atom is best known for publishing worldwide phenomenon Stephenie Meyer
Stephenie Meyer
Stephenie Meyer is an American author known for her vampire romance series Twilight. The Twilight novels have gained worldwide recognition and sold over 100 million copies globally, with translations into 37 different languages...
’s Twilight Saga. It is also the UK publisher of many bestselling teen series including P.C
P. C. Cast
Phyllis Christine Cast is an American romance/fantasy author, known for the House of Night series she writes with her daughter Kristin Cast, as well as her own Goddess Summoning and Partholon book series.-Career:...
& Kristin Cast
Kristin Cast
Kristin Cast is the coauthor of the House of Night series for young adults with her mother, P.C. Cast.She graduated from Broken Arrow Senior High in 2005....
’s House of Night
House of Night (series)
House of Night is a series of vampire-based fantasy novels by American author P. C. Cast and her daughter Kristin Cast. It follows the adventures of Zoey Redbird, a sixteen-year-old girl who has just become a fledgling Vampyre and is required to attend the House of Night boarding school in Tulsa,...
, Melissa de la Cruz
Melissa de la Cruz
Melissa de la Cruz is an American author, known for her work in young-adult fiction. Her works include the Au Pair series of novels and the Blue Bloods series.-Biography:...
’s Blue Bloods
Blue Bloods (series)
Blue Bloods is a series of vampire novels by Melissa de la Cruz. The series is set in Manhattan, New York. There are currently five books in the series: Blue Bloods, Masquerade, Revelations, The Van Alen Legacy, and Misguided Angel. A companion novel, Keys to the Repository, was released on June...
, Scott Westerfeld
Scott Westerfeld
Scott Westerfeld is an American author of science fiction. He was born in Texas and now divides his time between Sydney, Australia and New York City, USA.-Books:...
’s Midnighters and Lisi Harrison’s Monster High
Monster High
Monster High is an American line of fashion dolls created by Garrett Sander with the illustrations done by Kellee Riley. They were officially released in July 2010 but made in 2007....
.
Piatkus
Piatkus was founded in 1979 from the spare bedroom of Judy Piatkus’s home in Loughton, Essex, and was acquired by Little, Brown in 2007. Piatkus publishes fiction and lifestyle titles, and joined with Little, Brown to further widen their audience.Piatkus publishes a range of fiction and non-fiction. Its lifestyle list covers the areas of health; mind, body and spirit; self-help; business; personal development and all the topics that interest people in their daily lives. It includes international authorities such as Patrick Holford
Patrick Holford
Patrick Holford is a British nutritionist/nutritional therapist and author. He appears regularly on television and radio in the UK and abroad. He has 34 books in print in 24 languages...
, the UK’s leading nutritionist; bestselling MBS authors Brian Weiss
Brian Weiss
Brian Leslie Weiss , M.D., is an American psychiatrist. His research includes reincarnation, past life regression, future-life progression and survival of the human soul after death.-Personal and professional life:...
and Sylvia Browne
Sylvia Browne
Sylvia Browne is an American author who describes herself as a psychic and spiritual medium...
; and bestselling business authors Seth Godin
Seth Godin
Seth Godin is an American entrepreneur, author and public speaker. Godin popularized the topic of permission marketing.-Background:...
and David Allen
David Allen
David Allen, Dave Allen, David Allan, or Dave Allan may refer to:-Acting, entertainment and broadcasting:* Dave Allen , Irish comedian* Dave Allen , American television and film actor...
.
Piatkus is also known for its wide variety of fiction, which includes romance, historical fiction, paranormal, supernatural and horror. The fiction list includes Nora Roberts
Nora Roberts
Nora Roberts is a bestselling American author of more than 209 romance novels. She writes as J.D. Robb for the "In Death" series, and has also written under the pseudonym Jill March...
and her alter-ego, J.D. Robb
J.D. Robb
J.D. Robb was a composer of electronic and classical music....
, Sherrilyn Kenyon
Sherrilyn Kenyon
Sherrilyn Kenyon is a bestselling US writer. Under her own name she writes Urban Fantasy, but is best known for her Dark-Hunter vampire series. Under the pseudonym Kinley MacGregor she wrote historicals also with paranormal elements...
, Christine Feehan
Christine Feehan
Christine Feehan is an American romance-paranormal writer. She has published more than 26 novels, including five series, and numerous novellas since 1999.-Biography:...
and Julia Quinn
Julia Quinn
Julia Quinn is the pseudonym used by Julie Pottinger , a best-selling American historical romance author, who says she chose her pseudonym so her Regency romances would be on bookshelves next to those of the successful romance writer Amanda Quick...
, and new British authors such as Rosamund Lupton and Carolyn Jess-Cooke
Carolyn Jess-Cooke
Carolyn Jess-Cooke is a poet and novelist from Belfast, Northern Ireland.- Biography :Carolyn Jess-Cooke was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1978. She was educated at The Queen's University of Belfast, where she received a BA , MA, and PhD by the age of 25...
.
Hachette Digital
Hachette Digital, formerly Hachette Audio, is the imprint responsible for publishing in electronic formats. The name changed in January 2008 to reflect the widening nature of digital operations.Audiobook publishing has historically been an area of great strength for Little, Brown: titles have been acclaimed for the quality of adaptation, readers and packaging. Increasingly, these are available completely unabridged.
Hachette Digital has recorded over 400 audiobooks to date, and has published on CD and as digital downloads
Music download
A music download is the transferral of music from an Internet-facing computer or website to a user's local computer. This term encompasses both legal downloads and downloads of copyright material without permission or payment...
; all titles are available to buy and download from online retailers such as Audible
Audible
Audible may refer to:* Sound that is capable of being heard* Audible, a tactic used by quarterbacks in American football to change a play at the line of scrimmage* Audible.com, an online audiobook store-See also:*Audio...
and iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
.
Hachette Digital has had an ebook publishing programme for more than eight years, but demand for ebooks is now higher than ever. There are ongoing plans for digitisation, across both front and backlist titles, and there are currently more than a thousand titles available as ebooks.
Hachette Digital titles are available from the major UK ebook retailers, including the Amazon’s Kindle store, Waterstones, WHSmith and Apple
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
’s iBookstore. Hachette Digital has a number of enhanced titles available as apps for the iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
, iPod Touch
IPod Touch
The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line...
, iPad
IPad
The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...
and other devices.
See also
- Virago PressVirago PressVirago is a British publishing company founded in 1973 by Carmen Callil to publish books by women writers. Both new works and reissued books by neglected authors have featured on the imprint's list....
- Little, Brown and CompanyLittle, Brown and CompanyLittle, Brown and Company is a publishing house established by Charles Coffin Little and his partner, James Brown. Since 2006 it has been a constituent unit of Hachette Book Group USA.-19th century:...
External links
- Little, Brown Book Group Corporate Site www.littlebrown.co.uk
- Little, Brown Book Group News & Blog www.littlebrownbooks.net
- Virago www.viragobooks.net
- Orbit www.orbitbooks.net
- Atom www.atombooks.net
- Piatkus www.piatkusbooks.net