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| Parent company | Penguin Group (Penguin Random House) |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1955 |
| Founder | Charles Byrne and Frederic Klein |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | New York City |
| Imprints | Ace, Jove, New American Library |
| Official website | berkleyjoveauthors berkleysignetmysteries |
Berkley Books is an American imprint founded in 1955 by Charles Byrne and Frederic Klein owned by the Penguin Group unit of Penguin Random House.
Berkley Books began as an independent company in 1955. It was founded as "Chic News Company" by Charles Byrne and Frederick Klein, who had worked for Avon; they quickly renamed it Berkley Publishing Co. The new name was a coinage, combining elements of their surnames, unrelated to either the philosopher George Berkeley or Berkeley, California. Under their editor-in-chief Thomas Dardis, over the next few years Berkley developed a diverse line of popular fiction and non-fiction, both reprints and mass-market paperback originals, with a particularly strong history in science fiction (books of Robert A. Heinlein and Frank Herbert’s Dune novels, for example). The company was bought in 1965 by G. P. Putnam's Sons [1] and in years to follow undertook a hardcover line under the Berkley imprint, chiefly but not only for science fiction. For example, Merle Miller’s Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman (1973), and The Search for J.F.K. by Joan and Clay Blair Jr. (1976) were substantial nonfiction books under that imprint. When Putnam bought Grosset & Dunlap and Playboy Press, the Jove, Ace and Playboy Press paperback lists were added to that of Berkley; the Playboy list was eventually absorbed into Berkley, while the Jove and Ace lists have continued as distinct imprints.
Following its publication (1985) of the paperback reprint edition of Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October , Berkley Books became increasingly interested in publishing military combat fiction and technothrillers; its publicity campaigns at military bases contributed to the success of its reprint edition of Dale Brown's Flight of the Old Dog .[2] The Penguin Group purchased Putnam in 1996. When Penguin merged with Random House in 2013 to form Penguin Random House, Berkley was integrated with the larger paperback line New American Library; the Berkley name was retained for that whole program, which is part of PRH's Penguin Adult group, and publishes in mass-market paperback, trade paperback, and hardcover formats. [2]
In December 2008, Berkley cancelled the publication of the Herman Rosenblat Holocaust memoir titled Angel at the Fence when it was discovered that the book's central events were untrue. [3] [4] In 2011, Berkley Books launched its ebook imprint InterMix. [5] In September 2012, Berkley Books announced that a trilogy of erotic romance novels by Maya Banks had been acquired for publishing. Her trilogy was described as similar to the Fifty Shades trilogy, featuring three billionaires. [6] [7]
In 2015, the sister paperback group New American Library was merged into Berkley. [8] [9] In April 2015, Berkley Books signed the self-published author Jasinda Wilder. [10] [11] In January 2016, Berkley was merged into Penguin's Putnam/Dutton. Ivan Held replaced Leslie Gelbman as president of Berkley Books. [12] In 2020, Berkley Books announced two new horror books by Grady Hendrix. [13]
Its major authors have included: [14]
Stranger in a Strange Land is a 1961 science fiction novel by American author Robert A. Heinlein. It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians, and explores his interaction with and eventual transformation of Terran culture.
Time Enough for Love is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, first published in 1973. The book made the shortlist for the Nebula, Hugo and Locus awards for best science fiction novel of that year, although it did not win. It did win a retrospective Libertarian Futurist Society award: the Prometheus Hall of Fame award for 1988.
Alexei Panshin was an American writer and science fiction critic. He wrote several critical works and several novels, including the 1968 Nebula Award–winning novel Rite of Passage and, with his wife Cory Panshin, the 1990 Hugo Award–winning study of science fiction The World Beyond the Hill.
Ace Books is a publisher of science fiction (SF) and fantasy books founded in New York City in 1952 by Aaron A. Wyn. It began as a genre publisher of mysteries and westerns, and soon branched out into other genres, publishing its first science fiction title in 1953. This was successful, and science fiction titles outnumbered both mysteries and westerns within a few years. Other genres also made an appearance, including nonfiction, gothic novels, media tie-in novelizations, and romances. Ace became known for the tête-bêche binding format used for many of its early books, although it did not originate the format. Most of the early titles were published in this "Ace Double" format, and Ace continued to issue books in varied genres, bound tête-bêche, until 1973.
Penguin Group is a British trade book publisher and part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. The new company was created by a merger that was finalised on 1 July 2013, with Bertelsmann initially owning 53% of the joint venture, and Pearson PLC initially owning the remaining 47%. Since 18 December 2019, Penguin Random House has been wholly owned by Bertelsmann.
E. P. Dutton was an American book publishing company. It was founded as a book retailer in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1852 by Edward Payson Dutton. Since 1986, it has been an imprint of Penguin Group.
Grosset & Dunlap is a New York City-based publishing house founded in 1898.
The New American Library is an American publisher based in New York, founded in 1948. Its initial focus was affordable paperback reprints of classics and scholarly works as well as popular and pulp fiction, but it now publishes trade and hardcover titles. It is currently an imprint of Penguin Random House; it was announced in 2015 that the imprint would publish only nonfiction titles.
G. P. Putnam's Sons is an American book publisher based in New York City, New York. Since 1996, it has been an imprint of the Penguin Group.
Jove Books, formerly known as Pyramid Books, is an American paperback and eBook publishing imprint, founded as an independent paperback house in 1949 by Almat Magazine Publishers. The company was sold to the Walter Reade Organization in the late 1960s. It was acquired in 1974 by Harcourt Brace which renamed it to Jove in 1977 and continued the line as an imprint. In 1979, they sold it to The Putnam Berkley Group, which is now part of the Penguin Group.
Dell Publishing Company, Inc. is an American publisher of books, magazines and comic books, that was founded in 1921 by George T. Delacorte Jr. with $10,000, two employees and one magazine title, I Confess, and soon began turning out dozens of pulp magazines, which included penny-a-word detective stories, articles about films, and romance books.
Jean Catherine Coulter is an American author of romantic suspense thrillers and historical romances who currently resides in northern California.
The list of works by Nora Roberts includes all of the novels and novellas published by author Nora Roberts. The list is in order by year, and within each year it is in alphabetical order. It includes books published under the names Nora Roberts, J.D. Robb, and Jill March. The complete listing of J.D. Robb novels, in series order, can also be found at in Death.
Random House of Canada was the Canadian distributor for Random House, Inc. from 1944 until 2013. On July 1, 2013, it amalgamated with Penguin Canada to become Penguin Random House Canada.
Maya Banks is an American bestselling author of erotic romance, romantic suspense, contemporary romance, and Scottish historical romance novels.
Erika Mitchell, known by her pen name E. L. James, is a British author. She wrote the best-selling Fifty Shades series of erotic romance novels, which spawned a multimedia franchise including a film trilogy of the same name. Prior to this, she wrote the Twilight fan fiction "Master of the Universe" that served as the basis for the Fifty Shades series under the web name Snowqueens Icedragon. In 2019 she published her first book unconnected with the fictional world of Fifty Shades, The Mister, to negative critical reaction.
Bared to You is a 2012 New York Times bestselling erotic new adult romance novel by writer Sylvia Day, focusing on the complicated relationship between two twentysomething protagonists with equally abusive pasts. The novel was initially self-published on April 3, 2012, by Day, with Berkley Books re-publishing the book on June 12, 2012, with an initial print run of 500,000 copies. Day has stated that Bared to You will be the first novel in her Crossfire series, with the follow-up novel, Reflected in You, published in October 2012. The Crossfire series sold five million English-language copies in 2012 and international rights were licensed in thirty-eight territories as of January 2013.
Penguin Random House Limited is a British-American multinational conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, with the merger of Penguin Books and Random House. Penguin Books was originally founded in 1935 and Random House was founded in 1927. It has more than 300 publishing imprints. Along with Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House is considered one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers.
Grady Hendrix is an American author, journalist, public speaker, and screenwriter known for his best-selling 2014 novel Horrorstör. Hendrix lives in Manhattan and was one of the founders of the New York Asian Film Festival.
Tiffany Reisz is an American author. She is best known for the Original Sinners series of erotica and she has won the RITA Award and a Lambda Literary Award.
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