Sphere Books
Sphere Books is the name of two British paperback publishers. History. The original Sphere Books was launched in 1966 by Thomson Corporation. Sphere was sold to Pearson PLC in 1985 and became part of Penguin. The name was retired in 1990. In 1976, Sphere paid $225,000 for the British publishing rights from Ballantine Books for the novelisation of a forthcoming science fiction film, "" by George Lucas (ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster). The book, like the film "Star Wars" released the following year, was an enormous success and sold out its initial print run. Sphere also published the  UK editions of Conan fantasy series by Robert E. Howard. The occult writer Dennis Wheatley edited a series of books published under the umbrella title of "The Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult", which included titles such as "Dracula" by Bram Stoker, "Moonchild" by Aleister Crowley, "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley and "Faust" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Sphere's involvement in science fiction was furthered with its "Sphere Science Fiction Classics" series published throughout the 1970s, which included "The World of Null-A" and "The Pawns of Null-A" by A. E. van Vogt, Arthur C. Clarke's "The Sands  of Mars" and Larry Niven's "Neutron Star". In 2006, Hachette Book Group acquired a number of imprints from the Time Warner Book Group, including Little, Brown and Company, Hodder & Stoughton Virago Press and Sphere. Today's Sphere is an imprint of Little, Brown. Writers whose works have been published with Sphere have included Patricia Cornwell, Mark Billingham, Jenny Colgan, Mitch Albom, Nicholas Sparks and Nicholas Evans. Sphere best-sellers have included "Long Way Round" by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, Ricky Tomlinson's autobiography "Ricky" , Sharon Osbourne's autobiography "Extreme", "A Brother's Journey" by Richard B. Pelzer, "Scar  Tissue" by Anthony Kiedis and "Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit?" by Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur.