I recently popped into Waterstones in London.

“Popped in” is not quite true.

I loitered.

Mostly around fiction, picking books up, reading the backs, putting them down, walking away—and occasionally walking straight back because a blurb had planted that irritating little question in the mind:

What happens next?

Bookshops still do this better than algorithms.

You arrive looking for nothing in particular and leave thinking about eleven books you had no intention of buying.

Here are some that stopped me.

Stephen King & Peter Straub — *Other Worlds Than These*

**Hardback — RRP £25 | Waterstones price £19.99**

This is the big one.

Jack Sawyer, first encountered as a twelve-year-old in *The Talisman*, is older now and once again crossing between worlds. This time infected teenagers, the mysterious Gullet and the fate of multiple worlds are in play.

It is both a return to *The Talisman* universe and a finale that connects back into King’s much larger *Dark Tower* mythology. The UK hardback also contains exclusive illustrations.

At 800-plus pages in the UK edition, this is not a book you casually put in your pocket.

You clear some space for it.

For Stephen King readers in Sri Lanka, this is probably one to watch.

Ian Rankin — *The Heights*

**Hardback — RRP £25 | Waterstones price £12.50**

This one has an immediately good crime-fiction premise.

A luxury high-rise overlooking Hyde Park. Steel, smoked glass and immensely wealthy residents who are accustomed to privacy.

Then the night concierge is murdered in the lobby.

Everyone living above him becomes a possible suspect.

Rankin moves away from Rebus here into a standalone London thriller, with Detective Gillian Gish trying to investigate people whose money and influence normally keep scrutiny at a comfortable distance.

At **£12.50 for the hardback**, this was one of those books that made me stop twice.

Freida McFadden — *The Witch*

**Hardback — £22**

Freida McFadden has become almost impossible to ignore.

But *The Witch* moves into particularly intriguing territory.

Julia Barlow, having lost her job and apartment, retreats to her family’s old Massachusetts estate to look after her grandmother.

Then the house begins behaving strangely.

The clock stops at the same time every night.

Lights flicker.

A voice cries outside her bedroom.

And buried in the history of the house is a woman executed for witchcraft in 1692.

McFadden connects the present-day mystery with the Salem witch-trial era and generations of family secrets.

This looks like exactly the kind of title that could travel quickly through BookTok and thriller-reading circles.

Ali Hazelwood — *Bound and Unbound*

**Paperback — RRP £10.99 | Waterstones price £8.99**

Two paranormal romances in one volume.

In *Bound*, a graduate student with a talent for forgery becomes involved with a very secretive British professor and an ancient manuscript.

Flip the book over and *Unbound* gives you a five-thousand-year-old revenant, an exhausted emergency-room doctor and a relationship that should never really happen.

Dark academia, paranormal romance, forbidden attraction, ancient texts and danger.

Ali Hazelwood knows her audience.

A.T. Emerald — *Under the Iron Sky*

**Hardback — £22**

This was another cover that demanded inspection.

The world of Vordell has spent fifteen years beneath an unnatural Iron Sky. Humanity is at war with the returning Dar’rak.

Commander Soraya Tollmere is captured by the enemy’s most feared soldier—the masked figure known as the Demon.

His job is to break her.

Instead, prisoner and interrogator begin discovering that the war, their loyalties and perhaps each other are not quite what they believed.

Dark fantasy, enemies-to-lovers tension and a collapsing world.

This feels written for the current romantasy moment.

Callie Hart — *Quicksilver*

**Paperback — £10.99**

Sometimes you encounter a book in a shop after the internet has already done much of the introduction.

*Quicksilver* is one of those.

Saeris Fane is surviving in a desert kingdom by stealing water while hiding her ability to manipulate metal. A confrontation with the ruling powers awakens an ancient portal—and brings the warrior Kingfisher into her life.

Romantasy readers probably already know what happens next: magic, danger, attraction and another world.

This is the sort of title where BookTok and the physical bookshop shelf now seem to reinforce each other.

Olga Ravn — *The Wax Child*

**Paperback — RRP £9.99 | Waterstones price £7.99**

Perhaps the strangest book in this group.

And therefore one of the most interesting.

In Denmark in 1620, Christenze Krukow fashions a tiny human figure from beeswax.

The wax child cannot really see.

It cannot really hear.

Yet somehow it watches.

What follows is built around an actual seventeenth-century Danish witch trial: rumours, accusations, female friendship, fear, magic and the terrible consequences once a community decides someone is a witch.

The novel was longlisted for the **2026 International Booker Prize**.

At **£7.99**, this might be the sleeper in my pile.

Lynn Painter — *Trust Fall*

**Paperback — RRP £9.99 | Waterstones price £8.49**

A lighter turn.

Julia’s family unexpectedly inherits a fortune from their millionaire neighbour and suddenly moves from ordinary small-town life into wealthy New York.

New house.

Elite school.

Completely different world.

Then comes Damion, the attractive tutor supposedly helping her catch up academically.

Unfortunately, Damion has another reason for getting close to Julia: he is related to the man who left her family the money and doesn’t believe they should have inherited it.

The obvious problem develops.

He starts falling for the person he is investigating.

Classic romantic machinery—and sometimes that is exactly what you want.

Katie Kirby — *Lottie Brooks’s Twelve Disasters of Christmas*

**Hardback — RRP £14.99 | Waterstones price £7.49**

Then there was Lottie.

Christmas in the Lottie Brooks world means presents, chocolate, family—and apparently chaos.

This new collection moves beyond Lottie herself to see what familiar characters are doing over Christmas, including Burger Tom, Molly in Australia and the unfortunate hammies dealing with cousin Fwankie.

At **£7.49 for the hardback**, this immediately caught my attention from a children’s-book point of view.

# Then I wandered out of fiction…

Which was a mistake.

Because the memoirs were waiting.

## Michael Douglas — *One Helluva Ride*

**Hardback — £25**

The title is fairly accurate.

Douglas looks back across Hollywood, his complicated relationship with his father Kirk Douglas, marriages and affairs, addiction, his son’s difficulties and his own battle with cancer.

At 82, he appears to have decided that there wasn’t much point writing a cautious autobiography.

For anyone interested in the great Hollywood period through the eyes of somebody who actually lived inside it, this is difficult not to pick up.

Sir Alex Ferguson — *Games of My Life*

**Hardback — RRP £40 | £20**

Twenty-one football matches.

One life.

Sir Alex Ferguson uses 21 games that mattered personally to him to move through his journey from Govan to Manchester United and some of the defining moments of one of football’s extraordinary managerial careers.

The book also draws on photographs and memorabilia from his private archive.

At **half its £40 recommended price**, this is another one I’d expect to attract considerable interest.

So how do you get one of these in Sri Lanka?

This is where being **Lanka Books Online** becomes useful.

If there is a new UK book you particularly want, tell us.

There are **two ways to do it**.

 I want it soon

We can source a specific available UK title for you.

The cost is:

**UK purchase price + 30% sourcing fee + postage to Sri Lanka.**

We would normally aim for delivery in approximately **14 days**, subject to availability and transport.

It isn’t the cheapest way.

Sending one particular book thousands of miles because one particular reader wants it never will be.

But if you have just discovered *The Witch*, *The Heights* or the latest Stephen King and don’t want to wait months, there is a way.

I’m interested—but I can wait

This is probably the more interesting option.

**Register your interest with us.**

Give Lanka Books Online the title you want and leave it with us.

We are continually buying books in Britain and sending larger consignments to Sri Lanka.

If we can source your book later at a better price—or put it into one of our regular shipments—the cost can fall substantially.

There is then **no need for the same individual UK-to-Sri Lanka postage charge or the normal individual 30% sourcing fee**.

It may take longer.

But it could cost considerably less.

And sometimes we may find a very good **pre-loved UK copy** rather than buying new.

That is really the Lanka Books Online idea.

**Want it urgently? We’ll try to find it quickly.**

**Happy to wait? Let us hunt.**

Because perhaps not every book needs to arrive tomorrow.

Some books are worth waiting for.

And some of the best discoveries happen when a box arrives from Britain and the book you wanted is sitting beside another one you never knew existed.

**Lanka Books Online**
*Pre-loved UK books • New UK titles sourced on request • Delivered to readers across Sri Lanka*