NAL
In the fifteen years immediately following World War II, paperback publishing came of age in the United States, with a handful of companies leading the way. Ten years after conceiving of the British based Penguin imprint in 1935, Allen Lane established an American branch called Penguin Books, Inc. (PBI). The two men that Lane hired to run PBI— Kurt Enoch and Victor Weybright—soon decided to separate from their British counterpart in 1948 and founded New American Library (NAL). Introducing Signet and Mentor as leading imprints, NAL began with titles such as William Faulkner's Sanctuary, D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover, and John Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat. After selling at least 3 million copies of James Jones's From Here to Eternity in its first year of publication, NAL was quick to publish the popular fiction of Ian Fleming and Mickey Spillane.
"Good reading for the millions" was the slogan of the founders of NAL more than fifty years ago, and it is equally appropriate for today's NAL. Offering a wide selection of fiction and nonfiction, NAL aims at reaching the largest possible number of readers, the true mass market. The NAL imprints—Signet, Onyx, Obsidian, Signet Eclipse, Signet Classics, Roc, and NAL Trade Paperbacks—publish over four hundred titles each year. Many of these are original works, supplemented by reprints originating primarily from sister imprints Dutton, and Putnam.
NAL is proud to publish such bestselling authors as Harlan Coben, Ken Follett, John Lescroart, Daniel Silva, Stuart Woods, J. R. Ward and Christina Dodd. Signet, Signet Eclipse, and Onyx are leading publishers of romance fiction. The Roc science fiction program includes New York Times bestseller Jim Butcher, S. M. Stirling and Karen Chance. The NAL trade paperback list includes a range of voices such as New York Times bestselling authors Jen Lancaster and Eric Jerome Dickey, as well as John Shors and Lesley Kagen. NAL also publishes New York Times bestselling titles from Montel Williams in hardcover.
Kara Welsh
Vice-President, Publisher
Kara Welsh joined Penguin Putnam in September 2001 as Vice President, Publisher of New American Library. Before joining NAL, she was Vice President, Deputy Publisher of Pocket Books, where she worked for 13 years.
Awards
The Nobel Prize
1936: Eugene O'Neill, U.S. [Signet Classics]
1934: Luigi Pirandello, Italy [Signet Classics]
1930: Sinclair Lewis, U.S. [Signet Classics]
1929: Thomas Mann, Germany [Signet Classics]
1925: George Bernard Shaw, England [Signet Classics]
1923: William Butler Yeats, Ireland [Signet Classics]
1907: Rudyard Kipling, England [Signet Classics]
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
1930: Laughing Boy [Signet Classics] by Oliver La Farge
1928: The Bridge of San Luis Rey [Current ed. Harper] by Thornton Wilder
1926: Arrowsmith [Signet Classics] by Sinclair Lewis
1921: The Age of Innocence [Signet Classics] by Edith Wharton
