Sarah Smarsh, author of Bone of the Bone: Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class

In BONE OF THE BONE, National Book Award finalist Sarah Smarsh brings her graceful storytelling and incisive critique to the challenges that define our times --- class division, political fissures, gender inequality, environmental crisis, media bias, the rural-urban gulf. Smarsh, a journalist who grew up on a wheat farm in Kansas and was the first in her family to graduate from college, has long focused on cultural dissonance that many in her industry neglected until recently. Now, this thought-provoking collection of more than 30 of her highly relevant, previously published essays from the past decade (2013–2024) --- ranging from personal narratives to news commentary --- demonstrates a life and a career steeped in the issues that affect our collective future.

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Freida McFadden, author of The Boyfriend

Sydney Shaw has terrible luck with dating. She's seen it all: men who lie in their dating profile, men who stick her with the dinner bill, and men who can't shut up about their mothers. But finally, she hits the jackpot. Her new boyfriend is utterly perfect. He's charming and handsome, and he works as a doctor at a local hospital. Sydney is swept off her feet. Then the brutal murder of a young woman --- the latest in a string of deaths across the coast --- confounds police. The primary suspect? A mystery man who dates his victims before he kills them. Sydney should feel safe. After all, she is dating the guy of her dreams. But she can't shake her own suspicions that the perfect man may not be as perfect as he seems. Because someone is watching her every move, and if she doesn't get to the truth, she'll be the killer's next victim.

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Louise Erdrich, author of The Mighty Red

In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding. Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can't read her future but seems to resolve his. Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet. He is determined to steal her and is eager to be a home wrecker. Kismet's mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary's family, and on her nightly runs, she tunes into the darkness of late-night radio, sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future --- her daughter’s and her own. Human time, deep time, Red River time, the half-life of herbicides and pesticides, and the elegance of time represented in fracking core samples from unimaginable depths is set against the speed of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and the sudden economic meltdown of 2008-2009.

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Jean Hanff Korelitz, author of The Sequel

Anna Williams-Bonner has taken care of business. That is to say, she’s taken care of her husband, bestselling novelist Jacob Finch Bonner, and laid to rest those anonymous accusations of plagiarism that so tormented him. Now she is living the contented life of a literary widow, enjoying her husband’s royalty checks in perpetuity. But for the second time in her life, a work of fiction intercedes, and this time it’s her own debut novel, The Afterword. When Anna publishes her book and indulges in her own literary acclaim, she begins to receive excerpts of a novel she never expected to see again, a novel that should no longer exist. Someone out there knows far too much: about her late brother, her late husband, and just possibly...Anna herself. What does this person want, and what are they prepared to do?

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The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave

October 2024

As she did with THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME, Laura Dave hits all the right notes with THE NIGHT WE LOST HIM. In it, family patriarch Liam Noone is found dead at the bottom of a cliff near the craftsman home on the California coast that he loved. He was a hotel magnate who developed properties that were both high-end and eco-friendly. While Liam’s death is first ruled an accident, one of his sons thinks that there was nothing accidental about it. He enlists the help of his half-sister, who very reluctantly joins him. Their investigation leads them deeper and deeper into their father’s life --- and the people closest to him. As Sam and Nora explore what happened, they have as tentative a relationship as Hannah and Bailey did in THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME.

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Week of October 28, 2024

Paperback releases for the week of October 28th include BROKEN TRUST, the latest installment of Robert B. Parker’s beloved Spenser series and the first penned by celebrated writer Mike Lupica; ABSOLUTION by Alice McDermott, a riveting account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War; THE BERRY PICKERS, a rich and layered debut novel from Amanda Peters, in which a four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a mystery that will haunt the survivors, unravel a family and remain unsolved for nearly 50 years; Lauren Grodstein's WE MUST NOT THINK OF OURSELVES, a piercing story of love, determination and sacrifice, inspired by a little-known piece of the history of the Jewish occupants of the Warsaw Ghetto in World War II; and ORBITAL by Samantha Harvey, a slender novel of epic power that deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space.

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Week of October 21, 2024

Paperback releases for the week of October 21st include Prince Harry's internationally bestselling memoir, SPARE, which is full of insight, revelation, self-examination and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief; THE WATCHMAKER’S HAND, Jeffery Deaver's twisty thriller featuring forensic criminalist Lincoln Rhyme and detective Amelia Sachs, who track a criminal with a bizarre and catastrophic m.o. --- toppling the construction cranes in New York City; THE MANOR HOUSE, Gilly Macmillan's terrifying story of what can happen after all your dreams come true; SISTERS UNDER THE RISING SUN by Heather Morris, a phenomenal novel of resilience and survival, sisterhood, bravery and friendship in the darkest of circumstances; and Loren Grush's THE SIX, the remarkable true story of America’s first women astronauts --- six extraordinary women, each making history going to orbit aboard NASA’s Space Shuttle.

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