Zebra Books
Zebra Books is Kensington Publishing's New York mass-market paperback imprint, launched in the mid-1970s by Walter Zacharius and known for historical romance and 1980s horror.
- Editions tracked
- 51
- First editions
- 46
- Books
- 51
- Years
- 1986 to 2012
Zebra Books is a publisher based in New York City, founded in 1975. We track 51 editions it published between 1986 and 2012, 46 of them first editions across 51 books. Each book lists its first edition and the points that identify it.
About Zebra Books
Zebra Books is a New York mass-market paperback imprint of Kensington Publishing, launched in the mid-1970s by Walter Zacharius and best known for historical romance.
Zacharius had co-founded the paperback house Lancer Books with Irwin Stein in 1961. After Lancer failed he started again with the editor Roberta Bender Grossman. Accounts differ on dates: Wikipedia says Kensington was founded in 1974 and Zebra launched in 1975, while a 2024 Shelf Awareness interview with Steven Zacharius says Zebra came first, in 1974, and Kensington followed a year later.
Zebra kept budgets and staff small, gave work to new or overlooked writers, and by the early 1980s had sales of about $10 million a year. Historical romance was its core, with authors including Janelle Taylor, Fern Michaels and Susan Wiggs. A horror line followed: its first big success was William W. Johnstone's The Devil's Kiss (1980), and its skeleton-heavy covers earned it the nickname "the skeleton farm". Horror output fell to two titles a month by 1993 and stopped in 1996. A traditional Regency romance line ran from 1985 to October 2005.
Zebra is still a Kensington imprint, publishing romance and women's fiction. Kensington is a family-run independent, led by Steven Zacharius since 2005, with distribution handled by Penguin Random House Publisher Services.
We have not yet written the guide to Zebra Books's first-edition conventions. Until we do, check each book's own page: we list its points where we know them. Know how Zebra Books marked its firsts? Tell us.
Published by Zebra Books
Frequently asked questions
How many Zebra Books books does MyVolumes track?
We track 51 editions published by Zebra Books, 46 of them first editions, across 51 books.
Where these facts come from
- Zebra Books, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
- Kensington Publishing, Wikipedia, 2026 (en.wikipedia.org)
- Among Friends: Steve Zacharius on the Roots of Kensington, Mass Market Publishing, Shelf Awareness, 2024 (shelf-awareness.com)
Every fact on this page was checked against the sources listed. Checked 17 October 2026. Reviewed by Harriet Ellis; read how we check facts.