[2] From the beginning Workman focused on publishing adult and children's non-fiction, and its titles and brands rank among the best-known in their fields, including: the What to Expect pregnancy and childcare guide; the educational series, Brain Quest and The Big Fat Notebooks; travel books like 1,000 Places to See Before You Die and Atlas Obscura; humor including The Complete Preppy Handbook and Bad Cat; award-winning cookbooks: The Noma Guide to Fermentation, The French Laundry Cookbook, Sheet Pan Suppers, The Silver Palate Cookbook, The Barbecue Bible; and novels including How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Water for Elephants and the Young Adult Newberry Medalist, The Girl Who Drank the Moon.

[6] The following decades saw a succession of titles that had strong sales and strong cultural impact, beginning in with The Official Preppy Handbook (1980) and continuing with In and Out of the Garden (1981), The Silver Palate Cookbook (1982), What to Expect When You’re Expecting (1984), The Book of Questions (1987), All I Need to Know I Learned from My Cat (1990), Good Omens (1990, the first and only novel published under the Workman imprint), Brain Quest (1992), Boynton On Board board books (1993), Shoes (1996), Fandex (1998), The Cake Mix Doctor (1999), How to Grill (2001), 1,000 Places to See Before You Die and Stitch N Bitch (2003), Gallop!

(2007), Indestructibles (2009), Safari and Steal Like an Artist (2012), and a trifecta in 2016, including the launch of two brands—The Big Fat Notebooks and Paint by Sticker—and Atlas Obscura.

Other notable authors include Sean Brock, Cheryl Day, Joshua McFadden, Lucinda Scala Quinn, Einat Admony, David Tanis, and Naomi Duguid.

Although it started as a small Southern house, over the years it has garnered national attention for a diverse range of renowned authors, including Julia Alvarez, Kaye Gibbons, Chimamanda Adichie, Robert Morgan, Lee Smith, Tayari Jones, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Daniel Wallace, and Amy Stewart, among others.

Today, it has offices in New York City and Chapel Hill and its numerous bestsellers and prizewinners include Water for Elephants, A Reliable Wife, Love, Loss, and What I Wore, Big Fish, Last Child in the Woods, The Leavers, In the Time of the Butterflies, An American Marriage, Dan Rather's What Unites Us, and The Book of Delights.

[11] Algonquin also publishes the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, a biannual prize established by author Barbara Kingsolver whose winners include Hillary Jordan's Mudbound, Heidi Durrow's The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, Lisa Ko’s The Leavers, Katharine Seligman's At the Edge of the Haight, and Jamila Minnicks Gleason's Moonrise Over New Jessup.

In 2017, an Algonquin Young Readers novel, The Girl Who Drank the Moon, by Kelly Barnhill, won the John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished contribution to children's literature in the prior year.

[13] Furia, by Yamilé Mendez, won the 2021 Pura Belpré Award for the best presentation of the Latin experience in a book for young adults.

Storey's authors include Julia Rothman, Maia Toll, Catherine Newman, Ty Allan Jackson, and the Xerces Society.