Waterstones Ipswich

11/08/2026

Book of the Month Spotlight ✨

Dead Heat by Sabine Durrant

This is the perfect poolside accompaniment, if you're planning on jet-setting somewhere nice and sunny sometime soon! ✈☀🌴

This is perfect for people who prefer crime books that are easier to read and are a bit less "literary" but still enjoyable entertainment. Especially if you are planning on switching your brain off, this could be a good one for you!

Set on an island in Greece with the main character on holiday himself, staying with two of his friends at their cottage, when, of course, there's a murder! Parties, fights, dinners... and everything that happens between them!

Full of revenge, secrets and lies, deceptions, jealousy, anger and resentment and what it can build into. Perfect for fans of authors like Freida McFadden and easy-reading crime books!

08/08/2026

Book of the Month Spotlight ✨

And we are starting with our Debut Prize winner!

May We Feed the King is a beautifully lyrical book about things lost to history: people, facts, their stories. Without documentation (and preservation), these things are destroyed. Without those people and their stories, they are gone. With this, grief is a theme that underpins the entire novel, the curator speaks of losing someone at the beginning who leaves a hole in their living space, and the king too, loses family members.

It is also the story of performance and how being reluctant to perform, can bring conspirators who would love nothing more than to bring the king down for not being who they want him to be.

With her previous poetry work, it is no surprise at how wonderfully atmospheric and beautifully described this world is. I felt I was transported into the dusty corners of a museum, or I could peer out of the castle window itself! This is perfectly suited to a rainy day with a warm beverage and a snuggle on the sofa, and the transitional period between summer and autumn may be the perfect time for this!

Perfect for historical fiction fans, Philippa Gregory, and Hilary Mantel.

06/08/2026

A dreamy combination on 13 August as V. E. Schwab will be in conversation with Julia Armfield about her spellbinding q***r love story, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, at our online event. Get your tickets to join them both here: https://www.waterstones.com/events/online-event-v-e-schwab-in-conversation-with-julia-armfield/online-events

04/08/2026

Welcome to August's Books of the Month ✨📚

NON-FICTION: Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. This exposé is going viral across social media with the author's case against Meta.

NON-FICTION: Moonlight Express by Monisha Rajesh. From the author of Around the World in 80 Trains, we are once again whisked away to different places in the world, this time, on nighttime locomotives.

YOUNG ADULT: Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins. The very highly anticipated prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy where Katniss' mentor, Haymitch, is competing in this deadly tournament!

CHILDREN'S: The Wild Ones by Steve Cole. A story of friendship and survival as all humans have disappeared and it is up to Scamp and his friends to find shelter.

THRILLER: Dead Heat by Sabine Durrant. The perfect poolside entertainment, set in Greece, this scorching thriller will have you flicking pages until the end!

SCI-FI/FANTASY: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab. Three different timelines, three different women, one consistent problem: vampires. This story bites into the cycles of toxic relationships and the people in them.

FICTION: May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry. A story of grief and lost history, a curator is bought to design anniversary displays, but often creates stories of the places she inhabits. What follows is the story of a reluctant king whose court transpires against him.

30/07/2026

30/07/2026

A big thank you to Mike Brooks - Author and everyone who came along to our author event at Geek Retreat Ipswich last weekend! 💙📚

We chatted about his brand new novel This is Where The Future Bleeds, and everything from capitalism to giant wasps, diversity in publishing to the destiny of worlds.

Not only can you now pick up a signed copy of his book in the shop, but the author has dropped off matching bookmarks, slydewasp stickers and BEER MATS from the inn in the story (!) to give away when you buy a copy!

29/07/2026

Book of the Month Spotlight ✨

Star Breakers: Zeke Zero vs the Galaxy by Ed Caruana

Treasure Planet meets Guardians of the Galaxy meets Indiana Jones.

The main character is 13 year old Zeke Zero, who has been on his own on crime planet Grimlax 17b since his father traded him for a new battery. He trusts nobody except his bird hologram sidekick, Elara.

After a series of unfortunate events (all of his own doing), Zeke reluctantly joins a ragtag crew of treasure hunters ‘The Starbreakers’ as they search the galaxy for a God’s eyeball. But other people are searching for it too, including the evil, centuries old ‘Princess’ Grizelda Grim, who will stop at nothing to get what she wants.

Ipswich Children's Book Group

26/07/2026

DISPLAY IN PROGRESS - do not touch by order of the curator! 😉📏🎨

Our Debut Fiction Prize winner has been announced, and...

May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry has won! 🎉

A startlingly original, intricate adventure in history, imagination and the human psyche, May We Feed the King finds the curator of a royal medieval palace drawn deeper and deeper into the life of its one-time occupants – a reluctant ruler and his courtiers scheming to replace him.

Asking how we view the past and how to reconcile with what is lost, Perry’s mischievously clever novel blends curiosity with compassion and rare lyrical power to deliver a beautifully haunting, ever-relatable tale about our relationship with the past, truth and each other.

🤴⚔️🏛️🍐🏰

Some Bookseller reviews:

‘This book is an early morning in
an old museum with the dust still hanging in the air. A fascinating examination of what history is and how we carry it with us.’ -- Colin, Belfast Forestside

‘Beautiful, artistic, philosophical, curious, and soothing. A historical tableau with contemporary sensibilities that provides much food for thought.’ -- Helen, Leeds

🤴⚔️🏛️🍐🏰

24/07/2026

Our event with author Mike Brooks is tomorrow afternoon, 1.30pm at Geek Retreat Ipswich!

Do come along if you're in the area. And if you're not, you can still request a copy of his brand new fantasy novel This Is Where The Future Bleeds to be signed on the day, just get in touch by phone or email.