Skip to main content

Features

Week of September 8, 2025

Paperback releases for the week of September 8th include THE MEDICI RETURN, the 19th installment in Steve Berry's series starring Cotton Malone, who is on the hunt for a forgotten 16th-century Pledge of Christ, a sworn promise made by Pope Julius II that evidences a monetary debt owed by the Vatican; Haruki Murakami's THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS, which is a love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for our peculiar times; BONE OF THE BONE, a searing and insightful volume of the brilliant and provocative essays that established Sarah Smarsh as one of the most important commentators on America’s class problem; and the paperback original THE GRAVE ARTIST, the second entry in Jeffery Deaver and Isabella Maldonado's series featuring Homeland Security Investigations agent Carmen Sanchez and her partner, security expert Jake Heron, who uncover chilling evidence pointing to a serial killer who has taken evil to the next level.

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.