Harlequin to launch new imprint HQ

Harlequin Australia has announced it will launch a new imprint called HQ in April.

The publisher, a division of HarperCollins ANZ, said the imprint will ‘showcase quality fiction with a focus on great storytelling, empowerment and selfrealisation’ targeted at ‘smart and curious women’. The imprint will publish across genre, including women’s fiction, suspense, domestic noir, historial epics and family saga.

The imprint will also have tailored HQ Non Fiction and HQ Young Adult lists.

HQ will launch with local author Fiona McCallum’s Finding Hannah (April), a ‘tender story of one woman’s journey through grief, and learning to live again’, and US author Benjamin Ludwig’s Ginny Moon, a ‘compelling narrative that goes deep inside the head and heart of an autistic girl’ (May).

Other forthcoming local titles include Jewel in the North by Tricia Stringer (May), The Good Teacher by R M Anderson and The Garden Apothecary by Reece Carter (both July).

HarperCollins ANZ CEO James Kellow said the imprint’s launch ‘marks an exciting new development for Harlequin’s local publishing’. ‘We want to bring quality, original books to our core audience—engaged, savvy women who love a good story,’ said Kellow.

Harlequin Australia publishing director Sue Brockhoff said HQ ‘recognises the ever-expanding interests of the book-reading public—a diversity that is also recognised by our authors’.

The local launch of HQ follows the UK launch last year.

Category: Local news