We are very sad to learn of the death of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman.
Elizabeth Strout’s new novel, My Name is Lucy Barton, is attracting glowing reviews.
‘Slim and spectacular...My Name Is Lucy Barton is smart and cagey in every way. It is both a book of withholdings and a book of great openness and wisdom. It starts with the clean, solid structure and narrative distance of a fairy tale yet becomes more intimate and improvisational, coming close at times to the rawness of autofiction by writers such as Karl Ove Knausgaard and Rachel Cusk.’ - Washington Post
Carrie Hope Fletcher reveals the cover to her new novel On the Other Side. Preorder for half price here! https://www.waterstones.com/book/on-the-other-side/carrie-hope-fletcher/9780751563146
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#booksbydesign
Relativity: The Special and the General Theory by Albert Einstein. This edition published by Penguin Books through their Penguin Classics imprint.
Our Fiction Book of the Month.
Browse the selection here: https://www.waterstones.com/campaign/books-of-the-month
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THE NOISE OF TIME - Julian Barnes
In May 1937 a man in his early thirties waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now. And few who are taken to the Big House ever return.
The novel is about the collision of art and power, about human compromise, human cowardice and human courage. Several different visuals and approaches, some of which are shown above, including cutting a figure in lino, were worked up in response to the powerful text.
The final image was chosen after much deliberation, as it succinctly captured the essence of the novel. We commissioned Vladimir Zimakov to produce a linocut. The figure is literally fenced in by the title typography, which has been sourced and then pasted together from a period sans serif font. The cover will be printed in vivid black and red foil, which will make the graphics more tactile and allow for an intense colour against the raw paper stock.
The bold graphics are referenced from the Soviet era for this cover: Soviet typography, film posters and matchboxes. Favourite pieces of this genre were pasted over the wall in the studio as inspiration during this project. One thing that stood out the most from this research was the stark grammar of simple geometry, typography and flat blocks of colour of Soviet graphics. Sans serif fonts and the colours red and black dominated the wall and therefore found their way into the finished design.
When it comes to the thriller of the year, a gorgeous special edition (with beautiful red page-edges) is absolutely necessary.
A dazzling story for young and old.
The Fox and the Star is the Waterstones Book of the Year.
We are delighted to announce that The Fox and the Star by Coralie Bickford-Smith is our Waterstones Book of the Year.
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To mark the bicentenary of the birth of Charlotte Brontë in 2016, Vintage is today publishing one novel by each of the famous Brontë sisters: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë, and Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.
Each book features the work of artist Sarah Gillespie. Her work beautifully and perfectly complements that of the Brontës across the centuries. Sarah writes of revealing “a world of dancing atoms and temporal fragility, of moths, blossom, hares and birds, whose cycles of life and death so often remain invisible to human eyes, hidden within the enormity of the landscape or the dark of night, such as the Brontë sisters knew.”
More work by this remarkable artist can be seen on her website www.sarahgillespie.co.uk
We love these beautiful new Brontë editions. Available to buy/order in stores and on www.waterstones.com
*Subject to availability.
"An extraordinary work-pure excitement, unencumbered narrative, moral warmth, barefaced rejoicing in beauty, but excitement most of all." - The New York Times
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Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train
On this day in 1993 the American author Annie Proulx won the National Book Award for her novel The Shipping News. The book went on to become a major film by Lasse Hallström, starring Kevin Spacey and Judi Dench. It was released by Disney in 2001.
Christmas has well and truly arrived in our shops! Here's a pic of the fiction floor at Waterstones Piccadily.