William Collins and The Times Literary Supplement will launch a new imprint, TLS Books, this autumn. Born out of a shared philosophy - to bring beautiful and relevant writing to as wide an audience as possible - the list will combine brand new 10,000-word essays from a diverse range of authors alongside classic texts, including from the TLS's own 117-year-old archive.

The launch titles will be:

The Hero by Lee Child

Child's Jack Reacher novels have achieved a rare combination of massive popular appeal and appropriate critical acclaim.  He has created a hero - questioning, self-reliant, rejecting consumerism and technology - for the modern age. His essay will help to explain how and why he did it.

Love's Work by Charlotte Shane

Charlotte Shane is a writer, literary critic and co-founder of TigerBee Press.  Her book Prostitute Laundry was an epistolary account of life as a sex worker. Her new essay will connect sex, capitalism, love and feminism.  She writes regularly for the TLS.

On Reading and Re-Reading by Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf is one of the great authors of the English canon, and wrote for the TLS in the first half of the twentieth century.  This collection of essays will reflect her interest in major and minor writers, including her contemporaries, and provide an insight into her own novel-writing of the period.

Stig Abell, editor of the TLS says, ‘Launching this imprint is the culmination of two years of excitable conversations.  We want to create beautiful books, from the past and present, that are provocative and surprising and a pleasure to read and share.  This is just the beginning - and the possible scope for all this is pretty enormous - but what a great place to start: the world's greatest writer of thrillers, one of the world's most important writers full stop, and a mesmerising voice from the US.  There is so much more to come, too’.

David Roth-Ey, William Collins Executive Publisher says, ‘Having played a vital role in supporting writers and the book publishing industry for well over a century, the TLS is taking a bold and fitting step forward in launching TLS Books.  We are delighted to be supporting their global launch into bookshops.’

Lee Child says, ’Most dreams are unattainable - Aston Villa never called, asking me to play centre forward on Saturday; the Yankees don’t need a new right fielder; Massive Attack already have a bass player.  But some compensation came when a 117-year-old literary institution I have read and admired all my life asked for a contribution. That’s validation for you. I’m thrilled to participate. It feels like the TLS is going places again, under its new leadership.  It feels good to be on board. It proves there’s life in the old dog yet - me and the magazine.”

The three launch titles will be published this November.