HarperPaperbacks

HarperPaperbacks belongs to HarperCollins, the American-British publisher that News Corporation, now News Corp, put together around 1990. News Corporation bought Harper & Row in 1987 and William Collins, Sons in 1990, and the combined house then started a mass-market paperback line. Its job was to sit beside Harper Perennial, the company's trade paperback imprint. According to Wikipedia, the line was called Harper Paperbacks from 1990 to 2000, then HarperTorch until 2006, and has simply been Harper since 2007. Some catalogues still carry the old spelling on later reprints, so the name turns up on books well after 2000.

This is the small, affordable format: pocket-sized books made to be bought at a rack and read on the move. The line was never a single-genre list. It reissued books that had already proved themselves, including titles that began as hardcovers from HarperCollins or its predecessors.

The Exorcist is the book that brings most readers here. William Peter Blatty's novel came out in 1971 from Harper & Row, the house that later became part of HarperCollins. It follows twelve-year-old Regan MacNeil, her mother, an actress, and the priests who become involved as doctors run out of explanations. Open Library records a movie tie-in mass-market edition from February 1994, described as the first HarperPaperbacks printing. It runs 385 pages and has the ISBN 9780061007224. Retail sites list that same ISBN under Harper or HarperPaperbacks with a 2013 date, so check the copyright page if the exact printing matters to you.

Expect a plain, compact paperback rather than a collector's volume. The text is the author's novel in full, and the cover usually leans on the film. If you want a copy of a title first issued under this name, search under Harper, the line's current name, and compare ISBNs to be sure you have the edition you mean.