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William Heinemann is one of the oldest literary imprints still publishing today. Founded in 1890, the imprint boasts both a rich literary heritage and a forward-thinking, cutting-edge list of contemporary fiction and non-fiction. 

Historically we have published Harper Lee, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Anthony Burgess, Sylvia Plath, Truman Capote, Angela Carter, Graham Greene, John Steinbeck and Nabokov to name just a few. Today William Heinemann publishes acclaimed fiction by Nicola Barker, James Ellroy, Nick Harkaway, John Niven, Sara Baume, Jenni Fagan, Lauren Groff, Richard Powers, Sarah Taylor, Tom Hanks, Eley Williams, Sathnam Sanghera and Michel Houellebecq, as well as some of the best upmarket crime and thriller writers, including Thomas Harris and Donna Leon. Our non-fiction is an eclectic mix that includes current affairs, reportage, popular culture, memoir, popular science and narrative non-fiction from authors such as Laurence Scott, Charles Duhigg, Caroline Elton, Dexter Dias, Jennifer Eberhardt and Thomas Harding.

Lauren Groff

Lauren Groff is the author of three New York Times bestselling novels – Fates and Furies (named by Barack Obama as his favourite book of 2015), The Monsters of Templeton and Arcadia – as well as the story collection Delicate Edible Birds. She graduated from Amherst College and has an MFA in fiction from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Groff’s fiction has won the Pushcart Prize and the PEN/O. Henry Award, among others, and has been shortlisted for the Orange Award for New Writers and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In 2017, she was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists. Her stories have appeared in publications including The New Yorker, the Atlantic, One Story and Ploughshares, and in several of the annual The Best New American Stories anthologies. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, with her husband and two sons.

Lauren Groff

Richard Powers

Richard Powers is the author of ten novels, including Galatea 2.2 and The Gold Bug Variations, both of which were nominated for the US National Book Critics Circle Award, Operation Wandering Soul, which was nominated for the US National Book Award for Fiction, Plowing the Dark, Gain, and The Time of Our Singing, winner of the WH Smith Literary Award. He lives in Illinois.

Richard Powers

Donna Leon

Donna Leon was named by The Times as one of the 50 Greatest Crime Writers. She is an award-winning crime novelist, celebrated for the bestselling Brunetti series. Donna has lived in Venice for thirty years and previously lived in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China, where she worked as a teacher. Donna’s books have been translated into 35 languages and have been published around the world. Her previous novels featuring Commissario Brunetti have all been highly acclaimed; including Friends in High Places, which won the CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction, Fatal Remedies, Doctored Evidence, A Sea of Troubles and Beastly Things.

Donna Leon

Nicola Barker

Nicola Barker was born in Ely in 1966 and spent part of her childhood in South Africa. She is the author of twelve novels – including Wide Open, Darkmans, The Yips and In the Approaches – and two short story collections. She has been twice longlisted and once shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, has won the IMPAC, the John Llewellyn Rhys and the Hawthornden Prizes, and was named one of Granta’s 20 Best Young British Writers in 2003. Her latest novel, H(A)PPY, won the 2017 Goldsmiths Prize and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2018.

Nicola Barker

Tom Hanks

Tom Hanks has been an actor, screenwriter, director and through Playtone, a producer. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. This is his first collection of fiction.

Tom Hanks

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