Louis Hachette founded Hachette 1826. The first imprint of the company was Little, Brown and Company was founded in 1837. 131 years later, Time Inc. acquired the imprint. By 1980, Hachette was acquired by Jean-Luc Lagardère. As Little, Brown and Company grows, it and Warner Books merge to become Time Warner Trade Publishing, which is later named Time Warner Book Group. Over the next ten years the company launched more imprints until it was acquired by Hachette Livre, the largest publishing company in France, in 2006. Time Warner Book Group was renamed Hachette Book Group USA. Their audio book imprint, formerly named Time Warner Audio Books was renamed Hachette Audio. Warner Books was renamed a year later to Grand Central Publishing and two more imprints were created. Hachette Book Group then went international and opened an office in Toronto, created Hachette Book Group Canada, Inc. Several more imprints were created over the years and the company was renamed to Hachette Book Group and dropped the USA in their title. They then adopted the agency model of sales where all ebook titles are sold directly to consumers by means of third party agents. In 2016, HBG had 214 books on the New York Times bestseller list, 44 of which reached number one. The company has created, adjusted and merged imprints over the past ten years and continues to do so.
Bestselling Books published by Hachette Book Group
1. The Longest Ride by Nicholas Sparks
Former bull-riding champion Luke and college student Sophia are in love, but conflicting paths and ideals threaten to tear them apart: Luke hopes to make a comeback on the rodeo circuit, and Sophia is about to embark on her dream job in New York's art world. As the couple ponder their romantic future, they find inspiration in Ira (Alan Alda), an elderly man whose decades-long romance with his beloved wife withstood the test of time.
2. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Theodore Decker was 13 years old when his mother was killed in a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The tragedy changes the course of his life, sending him on a stirring odyssey of grief and guilt, reinvention and redemption, and even love. Through it all, he holds on to one tangible piece of hope from that terrible day -- a painting of a tiny bird chained to its perch.
3. Unlucky 13 by James Patterson
The Women's Murder Club is stalked by a killer with nothing to lose. San Francisco Detective Lindsay Boxer is loving her life as a new mother. With an attentive husband, a job she loves, plus best friends who can talk about anything from sex to murder, things couldn't be better.
4. Instinct by T.D. Jakes
Sharing life principles from biological and cellular research, his life and business experience, scriptures and sociology, technology and telecommunication,T.D. Jakes reveals how your internal navigational system, your instinct, can guide you through life journey until you arrive at your 'destined-nation.
5. The Hit by David Baldacci
Skilled assassin Will Robie is asked by the U.S. government to track down fellow assassin Jessica Reel, who has gone rogue, but during his pursuit of Reel, Robie realizes that her betrayal may be concealing a larger threat that could impact the whole world.
6. The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason
Vienna, 1914. Lucius is a twenty-two-year-old medical student when World War I explodes across Europe. Enraptured by romantic tales of battlefield surgery, he enlists, expecting a position at a well-organized field hospital. But when he arrives, at a commandeered church tucked away high in a remote valley of the Carpathian Mountains, he finds a freezing outpost ravaged by typhus. The other doctors have fled, and only a single, mysterious nurse named Sister Margarete remains.
7. Transcription by Kate Atkinson
In 1940, eighteen-year old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying.
8. Circe by Madeline Miller
Despised by her divine family, Circe discovers her powers of sorcery when she turns a human fisherman into a god. When he spurns her for another nymph, Scylla,Circe transforms her rival into a horrific sea monster who becomes the sourge of all sailors – an act that will haunt Circe for the rest of her life.
9. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Published in 1951, the novel details two days in the life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield after he has been expelled from prep school. Confused and disillusioned, Holden searches for truth and rails against the “phoniness” of the adult world.
10. The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
They're walking on the shore of Lyme Regis one day when they see a strange woman staring out at the sea. Supposedly she fell in love with a French lieutenant, and she's waiting for him to return. The wealthy and religious Mrs. Poulteney hired the French Lieutenant's Woman, Sarah Woodruff, as a companion a year before.