Waterstones Derby

Apologies if you're trying to reach us by phone - we are having some power issues at the moment, though we're working on getting them fixed! If you need to contact us urgently, please email derby@waterstones.com

Congratulations to our friend and colleague Fran on the forthcoming publication of her first book!

Just a reminder that our Thriller Of The Month is Jane Harper's excellent 'The Dry'. It seems likely that this is going to be the next word-of-mouth hit, and we can guarantee that it lives up to the buzz.
In the small town of Kiewarra, it hasn’t rained for two years. Swept up in the worst drought to ravage Australia in a century, the town crackles with seething malice and unvoiced grudges. Tensions in the community are at breaking point when three members of the Hadler family... are suddenly brutally murdered.
Everyone thinks Luke Hadler, who committed suicide after slaughtering his wife and six-year-old son, is guilty, but is he just an easy scapegoat? Policeman Aaron Falk returns to the town of his youth for the funeral of his childhood best friend, and is unwillingly drawn into the investigation.
As questions mount and suspicion spreads through the town, Falk is forced to confront the community that rejected him twenty years earlier. Because Falk and Luke Hadler shared a secret, one which Luke's death threatens to unearth. And as Falk probes deeper into the killings, secrets from his past and why he left home bubble to the surface as he questions the truth of his friend's crime.
'The Dry' is a descent into a flyblown, small-town Australia with the plot escalating in an ever more dizzying series of twists and revelations as we are edged ever nearer to the truth of what actually elapsed.
'The Dry' is currently in our Buy One, Get One Half Price offer, so come in and pick one up today!
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A current favourite instore is the recent winner of the Bailey's Women's Prize For Fiction, 'The Power' by Naomi Alderman.
What if the power to hurt were in women's hands?
Imagine a world where teenage girls awake one morning with extraordinary physical strength and power that outstrips their male counterparts. Thanks to a newly acquired section of muscle near their collarbone, young women can now conduct electricity like electric eels: inflicting pain or electrocuting to dea...th as they wish. They can even waken this power in older women too. In Naomi Alderman’s The Power, the balance of the world is irrevocably altered overnight.
The novel weaves four central points of view; that of Margot, the ruthlessly ambitious member of American government; Roxy, the somewhat gullible daughter of a London gangster; Tunde, a young Nigerian man who documents the worldwide change known as Day of the Girls; and Allie, a teenage runaway who becomes revered as a deity; through their experiences, we witness the ways in which women utilise their newfound dominance.
This brave new world is far from a utopia however. As uprisings and revolts spread through the world and after the initial delight in female empowerment subsides, a darker side to the new world order emerges.
Exploring the concepts of gender, hierarchy and power, The Power is an ingenious and masterfully crafted piece of feminist science fiction as well as a searing indictment of our contemporary world.
Ideal for fans of Margaret Atwood, 'The Power' is currently in our 'Buy One, Get One Half Price' offer.
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Arriving in paperback just in time for summer is Travis Elborough's 'A Walk In The Park', an excellent history of the public park, a thing we all use and almost take for granted, but which is something that was hard fought for, and faces an uncertain future.
Of course, we have a significant part of that history here in Derby, in the shape of the Arboretum, often described as Britain's first public park, in that it was the first park to be deliberately planned as a place for p...ublic recreation in an urban setting.
'A Walk In The Park' takes in this and many other stories, including the Birkenhead inspiration for Central Park, the long-disappeared Vauxhall Gardens, the mock Khyber Pass in a Hull park, the inspiration for the cover of 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band' and much more besides.
Travis is fast becoming one of our best-loved social historians, and this book is further evidence for why that is!
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Highlights from the first two days of Derby Book Festival 2017!

The very marvellous Mog is spending the day with us. Mog is out and about in the store on the hour 11-4 today. See you there!

Tuesday 6th June 2017 is a very special day, as it sees the publication of Arundhati Roy's first work of fiction in twenty years, 'The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness'. For those (like us) who have been waiting patiently since 'The God Of Small Things' for her next novel, today is a day of the utmost happiness!
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness transports us across a sub-continent on a journey of many years. It takes us deep into the lives of its gloriously rendered characters, e...ach of them in search of a place of safety - in search of meaning, and of love.
In a graveyard outside the walls of Old Delhi, a resident unrolls a threadbare Persian carpet. On a concrete sidewalk, a baby suddenly appears, just after midnight. In a snowy valley, a bereaved father writes a letter to his five-year-old daughter about the people who came to her funeral. In a second-floor apartment, a lone woman chain-smokes as she reads through her old notebooks. At the Jannat Guest House, two people who have known each other all their lives sleep with their arms wrapped around one another, as though they have just met.
A braided narrative of astonishing force and originality, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is at once a love story and a provocation - a novel as inventive as it is emotionally engaging. It is told with a whisper, in a shout, through joyous tears and sometimes with a bitter laugh. Its heroes, both present and departed, have been broken by the world we live in—and then mended by love. For this reason, they will never surrender.
Humane and sensuous, beautifully told, this extraordinary novel demonstrates on every page the miracle of Arundhati Roy’s storytelling gifts
Having read it, we can assure you that it was well worth the wait. Let's just hope that she doesn't leave it so long until the next one....!
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Our Book Of The Month for June is 'Hot Milk' by Deborah Levy. Shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the Goldsmiths Prize, it's already been turning quite a lot of heads!
A mother and daughter arrive in a small Spanish village, caught between the desert and the dark blue of the Mediterranean Sea. Rose, struck down by a mysterious illness that has left her incapacitated, is hoping for miraculous treatment from the mysterious Dr Gomez in his clinic. Her daughter Sofia is tra...pped by her mother’s illness; paralysed herself by a life in which she is chained to her mother’s hypochondria, neurosis and immobility.
As the hot sun beats down, these two women’s lives simmer with pent-up resentment and bitterness. As Sofia struggles against the confines of the caged existence her mother has created for her, exploring her own sexuality and independence she threatens to tear the fragile threads that hold these two women’s lives together.
There is a wonderful, playful surrealism here deliberately at odds with the glaring immediacy of this post-austerity Europe. Here are characters, countries, locked into immobility; waiting on the edge of what may be development, growth or catastrophic decline.
Hot Milk is a novel that seems to have emerged directly from the times we live in. Uncompromising, brave, sharply funny and delightfully curious, this is a novel for our times.
This is currently available in our 'Buy One Get One Half Price' offer, alongside our Thriller Of The Month, 'The Dry' by Jane Harper, our Non-Fiction Book Of The Month, J.D. Vance's 'Hillbilly Elegy' and our Children's Book Of The Month, 'The Legend Of Podkin One-Ear'.
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This afternoon we are very pleased to be hosting the very talented children's author and ex-colleague Dan Walker. Sky Thieves heroine,​ Zoya Delarose wakes up on a creaking sky ship in the dead of night. She has no idea why she was smuggled aboard or that her life is about to change forever...
Dan will be here at 2pm.

Looking for something to keep the kids entertained over half-term? Currently on offer at half price is David Walliams' new book, 'The World's Worst Children 2'!
Humbert the hungry baby. Cruel Clarissa. Harry, who never ever did his homework.
From that custodian of calamity, that nurturer of naughtiness David Walliams, we present the The World’s Worst Children 2, his second compendium of untold misbehaviour that will have you reeling in disbelief.
... Not since, well, David’s original The World’s Worst Children of last year, have we seen such an appalling rogue’s gallery of unprecedented misdemeanour.
Only someone who knows everything could have such knowledge. We’re simply appalled by the behaviour in this book – our tears reading it definitely not of hysteria, but of incredulous indignation – and it’s our duty to make sure no child should be exposed to its horrors. We’ve made it Half Price too, to make sure this monstrous book doesn’t stay in our bookshops for too long. And any booksellers found reading it and holding their sides with laughter will get the sternest talking to (as soon as we’ve finished reading it ourselves!).
Illustrated once again by David’s usual artist-in-arms Tony Ross, no detail, no stone of appalling activity is left unturned. Every terrible aspect is recorded by Tony’s gimlet eye, strictly to ensure no-one tries to mimic the ghastly goings-on within. You have been warned!
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Just a reminder that our Thriller Of The Month for May is the excellent 'A Rising Man' by Abir Mukherjee. Set in the hot and humid Calcutta of 1919, it finds our hero, Captain Sam Wyndham, recently arrived in the city, investigating the murder of a senior official outside a house of ill-repute. Not only has the man been murdered, but there is a note stuffed into his mouth, warning the British to get out of India.
It is against this backdrop of rising tensions that Wyndham is ...thrown into a case which seems to slipping from his grasp as the interests of the powerful need to be protected whilst the rights of the Indians themselves are trampled underfoot in these days when the British Empire was seen as inviolable.
Along with his sidekick, Sergeant 'Surrender-not' Banerjee, Wyndham must untangle a web of intrigue and find out what exactly has happened before an innocent man is sent to the gallows.
One of the best debut crime novels of recent times, Wyndham and Surrender-not make a great team, and you'll be kept baffled until the closing pages. Great stuff!
This is still in our Buy One Get One Half Price offer too....!
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Just a reminder, if you haven't read it yet, that our Book Of The Month is the brilliant 'The Girls' by Emma Cline.
Taking us back to 1969, where we find our narrator, Evie Boyd, a directionless fourteen year old girl, lost in the mess of her parents' recent divorce and growing apart from her best friend Connie. One day she sees a group of girls in a nearby park and is drawn to their otherness, especially that of Suzanne, who seems to exist in a separate world from that which... Evie has grown up in.
She comes to befriend them and is lured into their world, a world centred around an old ranch and their charismatic leader, Russell Hadrick. By now, you may be seeing parallels with a certain other cult leader who made headlines in 1969, and might see where this story is heading.
But this is so much more than merely a novel based on the Manson Family - Cline's prose is incredible, her descriptive powers wafting us back to those hazy summer days when certain ideas and ideals were being twisted into something shocking and nasty. And at the same time, there runs a parallel story set in the present day, where Evie finds that some of those attitudes persist, and not much really seems to change, we never really learn from the lessons from history.
Absolutely amazing, one of the best books I've read this year!
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Currently on offer at Half Price is the new Lee Child book, 'No MIddle Name', a collection of stories featuring his regular hero, Jack Reacher.
This is the first time all Lee Child's shorter fiction featuring Jack Reacher has been collected into one volume that includes a brand-new novella, 'Too Much Time'.
Added to these is every other Reacher short story that Child has written: ‘Small Wars’ which takes readers back to 1989, when Reacher is an MP assigned to solve the bruta...l murder of a young officer found along an isolated forest road in Georgia - and whose killer may be hiding in plain sight. In ‘Not a Drill,’ Reacher tries to take some downtime, but a pleasant hike in Maine turns into a walk on the wild side - and perhaps something far more sinister. ‘High Heat’ time-hops to 1977, when Reacher is a teenager in sweltering New York City during a sudden blackout that awakens the dark side of the city that never sleeps.
Okinawa is the setting of ‘Second Son,’ which reveals the pivotal moment when young Reacher’s sharp “lizard brain” becomes just as important as his muscle. In ‘Deep Down,’ Reacher tracks down a spy by matching wits with four formidable females - three of whom are clean, but the fourth may prove fatal. Rounding out the collection are ‘Guy Walks into a Bar,’ ‘James Penney’s New Identity,’ ‘Everyone Talks,’ ‘The Picture of the Lonely Diner,’ ‘Maybe They Have a Tradition,’ and ‘No Room at the Motel.’
Read together, these twelve stories shed new light on Reacher's past, illuminating how he grew up and developed into the wandering avenger who has captured the imagination of millions around the world.
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Alex rider is back!
The boy' spy's 11th adventure, 'Never Say Die' is the new, explosive misssion in this best selling series. The adrenaline-fuled, action-packed adventure sees our perennially teenaged hero trying to get his life back on track after the traumatic events of his last mission, but even Alex can't fight the past...especially when it holds a deadly secret.
Due out June 1st, great for half term!

Tim Marshall's 'Prisoners Of Geography' proved to be a popular book here at Derby Waterstones, so if you enjoyed that, you'll be pleased to hear that his latest book, 'Worth Dying For?' is now available in paperback.
When you see your nation's flag fluttering in the breeze, what do you feel? For thousands of years flags have represented our hopes and dreams. We wave them. Burn them. March under their colours. And still, in the 21st century, we die for them.
Flags fly at the ...UN, on the Arab street, from front porches in Texas. They represent the politics of high power as well as the politics of the mob. From the renewed sense of nationalism in China, to troubled identities in Europe and the USA, to the terrifying rise of Islamic State, the world is a confusing place right now and we need to understand the symbols, old and new, that people are rallying round.
In nine chapters (covering the USA, UK, Europe, Middle East, Asia, Africa, Latin America, international flags and flags of terror), Tim Marshall draws on more than twenty-five years of global reporting experience to reveal the histories, the power and the politics of the symbols that unite us - and divide us.
'Worth Dying For?' is currently available in our Buy One Get One Half Price offer (as is 'Prisoners Of Geography', so if you haven't read that yet, now's your chance!)
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Just out in paperback is Christopher McGrath's 'Mr. Darley's Arabian', which was shortlisted for the 2016 William Hill Sports Book Of The Year Award.
In 1704 a bankrupt English merchant sent home the colt he had bought from Bedouin tribesmen near the ruins of Palmyra. Thomas Darley hoped this horse might be the ticket to a new life back in Yorkshire. But he turned out to be far more than that: and although Mr Darley's Arabian never ran a race, 95% of all thoroughbreds in the ...world today are descended from him.
In this book, for the first time, award-winning racing writer Christopher McGrath traces this extraordinary bloodline through twenty-five generations to our greatest modern racehorse, Frankel.The story of racing is about man's relationship with horses, and Mr Darley's Arabian also celebrates the men and women who owned, trained and traded the stallions that extended the dynasty. The great Eclipse, for instance, was bred by the Duke who foiled Bonnie Prince Charlie's invasion (with militia gathered from Wakefield races) and went on to lead the Jockey Club. But he only became a success once bought and raced by a card-sharp and brothel-keeper - the racecourse has always brought high and low life together.
McGrath expertly guides us through three centuries of scandals, adventures and fortunes won and lost: our sporting life offers a fascinating view into our history. With a canvas that extends from the diamond mines of South Africa to the trenches of the Great War, and a cast ranging from Smithfield meat salesmen to the inspiration for Mr Toad, and from legendary jockeys to not one, but two disreputable Princes of Wales (and a very unamused Queen Victoria), Mr Darley's Arabian shows us the many faces of the sport of kings.
'Mr. Darley's Arabian' is currently on offer in our Buy One Get One Half Price deal!
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Just out in hardback is the new novel by Elizabeth Strout, 'Anything Is Possible'. Actually, the title is slightly misleading, as, on this evidence, it seems to be impossible for Strout to write a bad book!
Set in the same world as last year's 'My Name Is Lucy Barton', and featuring an appearance by Lucy herself, this novel uses the same structure of interlinked short stories that she previously used to great effect in 'Olive Kitteridge' to take a look at the small Midwestern... town that Lucy grew up in, and what the characters of her youth are doing now.
If you've read 'My Name Is Lucy Barton', some of the character's names may be familiar to you - the Pretty Nicely Girls, Charlie Macauley, etc - and they go about their daily business, some with secrets waiting to be discovered, some with secrets yet to be created, all of them recognisable, real-life, breathing people, whose whole lives seem to be revealed in the short stories of this book.
Hovering over them all is the figure of Lucy Barton, who got out of town, moved to New York and made a successful living as a novelist, whose most recent book, a memoir (possibly called 'My Name Is Lucy Barton'?) has just been published, causing some characters to reflect on their own past lives and interactions with her.
Strout is fast becoming one of those writers whose books are absolute must-reads, and we can thoroughly recommend this current slice of smalltown American life.
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Due to unforeseen circumstances, the Emma Henderson event on Thursday 11 May is cancelled. Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause. Emma will be appearing at Derby Book Festival on 14 June alongside Joanna Cannon - please see their website for details.

Thank you so very much for our Y5 visit today! The children were inspired, and we spent the afternoon reading our new books and discussing narrative!

So I was HERE a couple of days ago! So hard to choose when traveling and thinking about luggage weight!

Simply the building alone is worth the visit. The staff are great. The range of books is super. One of the best book shops in the U.K, perhaps Western Europe. Thumbs up.

Lovely store just like Birmingham me and my friend was browsing he brought book all 3 floors are good to will be visiting again sop xx

It was wonderful! So much to lust over ! Even if you couldn't afford it on that day !x

Fantastic service

Friendly staff

Always a pleasure to look round,the ordering is easy to