Sunlit Riffles and Shadowed Runs
Following World War II, the communist government of Poland forcibly relocated the country's Ukrainian minority by means of a Soviet-Polish population exchange and then a secretly planned action code-named Operation Vistula. In Scattered, Diana Howansky Reilly recounts these events through the experiences of three siblings caught up in the conflict, during a turbulent period when compulsory resettlement was a common political tactic used against national minorities to create homogenous states. Born in the Lemko region of southeastern Poland, Petro, Melania, and Hania Pyrtej survived World War II only to be separated by political decisions over which they had no control. Petro relocated with his wife to Soviet Ukraine during the population exchange of 1944 46, while his sisters Melania and Hania were resettled to western Poland through Operation Vistula in 1947. As the Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought resettlement, the Polish government meanwhile imprisoned suspected sympathizers within the Jaworzno concentration camp. Melania, Reilly's maternal grandmother, eventually found her way to the United States during Poland's period of liberalization in the 1960s. Drawing on oral interviews and archival research, Reilly tells a fascinating, true story that provides a bottom-up perspective and illustrates the impact of extraordinary historical events on the lives of ordinary people. Tracing the story to the present, she describes survivors' efforts to receive compensation for the destruction of their homes and communities. Silver Medal for World History, Independent Publisher Book Awards Finalist, Housatonic Book Awards Finalist in History, Foreword Books of the Year"
Basketball
BJ's mother is short.Mom is an abstract painter who runs an arty cafe. BJ, however, takes after her missing father. Just twenty-one, she's a college basketball player who lives and breathes the game. High tops and hoops occupy her every waking moment. When she accidentally discovers her dad, a shadowy presence throughout her whole life, she suspects her best friends may actually be closer than she thinks--are they her sisters? Maybe there is more family she's never met! BJ just wants to keep her mind on the game.
Calico Joe
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From America's favorite storyteller comes a moving novel of fathers and sons, forgiveness and redemption, hailed as "an enjoyable, heartwarming read that's not just for baseball fans" (USA Today). "Grisham knocks it out of the park."--The Washington Post It's the summer of 1973, and Joe Castle is the boy wonder of baseball, the greatest rookie anyone has ever seen. The kid from Calico Rock, Arkansas, dazzles Chicago Cubs fans as he hits home run after home run, politely tipping his hat to the crowd as he shatters all rookie records. Calico Joe quickly becomes the idol of every baseball fan in America, including Paul Tracey, the young son of a hard-partying and hard-throwing New York Mets pitcher. On the day that Warren Tracey finally faces Calico Joe, Paul is in the stands, rooting for his idol but also for his dad. Then Warren throws a fastball that will change their lives forever.
Baseball's Best Short Stories
This expanded edition features the best-loved short stories from the 20th century as well as new tales from some of the 21st century's most iconic names in fiction. No other sport has inspired as many great writers as baseball has, and this exceptional anthology brings together 34 short stories about the nation's favorite pastime. The stories span several decades and are written by some of America's favorite writers, including Zane Grey, James Thurber, Robert Penn Warren, T. Coraghessan Boyle, and Michael Chabon, among others. Many of the stories are about the game itself, while others use baseball as a backdrop for timeless themes, such as morality, greed, and love. Eight new stories have been added to this expanded edition and include "Bullet in the Brain" by Tobias Wolff, in which baseball is the surprising last memory of a dying man; George Plimpton's "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch," a fictional story about a baseball player who throws a 150-mph fastball that was a notorious April Fools' Day hoax in Sports Illustrated; and Leslie Pietrzyk's "What We All Want," about a pitcher's wife's concern for her aging husband. This collection is for all baseball lovers--long after the season is over.
The Art of Fielding
A disastrous error on the field sends five lives into a tailspin in this award-nominated tale about love, life, and baseball.At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended. Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert's daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life. As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths. Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment -- to oneself and to others.
Doubles
Slow Smith is in a slump. He's a professional tennis player stuck in his hometown, serving to an empty court. His wife is in a coma and he's afraid he's to blame. Left behind are her Polaroids, obsessive daily records of their life together. Meanwhile Kaz, Slow's lifelong doubles partner, is traveling the world while playing with someone new. Then one afternoon his old coach Manny appears in a dumpy Fiat convertible and persuades Slow to get in. When they return to Forest Hills -- the site of a six-year winning streak -- they reunite with old friends who call up long-buried desires and reveal a secret that threatens to destroy Slow's marriage as well as his friendship with Kaz. Slow just can't win -- and especially not back on the court. Turns out Kaz can't either. Theirs is a bond driven as much by odd habits as by shared life experiences -- a marriage not unlike the one rendered comatose -- and the only way to get their lives back on track is by playing together again. At once hilarious and heartbreaking, Doubles serves up a tale of melancholy and redemption -- both on the court and off.
Third and Long
Can the handsome, haunted stranger with a mysterious past save the soul of a dying Midwest factory town?"This novel is so good-hearted, so life-affirming, it's a joy to read...-Mary Ann Grossman, St. Paul Pioneer PressMeet Nick Remke, a damaged former Notre Dame football star desperate for a job and maybe redemption.It's 1997. Longview, Ohio, U.S.A. Nick finally gets his chance when he's hired to run Made Right, a family-owned clothing factory severely threatened by offshore competition. The entire town depends on the fragile fortunes of the overworked factor. All eyes now turn to Nick .Marie Zanay is among them. A single mother whose son stars on the Longview High football team, she's spent a lifetime rooting for her hometown and is acutely aware of the overwhelming odds against it. Still, Marie is forced to admit that Nick the newcomer suddenly has the townsfolk feeling inspired. Is that hope misplaced, or is it possibly real?For Nick, it's been a long, winding, rocky road filled with disappointment and doubt. Becoming MVP of a small town on the Ohio River was never his goal . . . until it became his dream.Third and Long is the saga of a vanishing America hanging by a thread, with perhaps just enough time remaining for one last hail-Mary. Think Friday Night Lights meets It's A Wonderful Life.With a cast of characters both unforgettable and strikingly familiar, Third and Long takes you on a poignant, emotional journey across an iconic American landscape."Third and Long is an American classic. It's a story about hope and possibilities, crumbled dreams, and surprising redemption. I loved it!"-Lynne Cox, author of Swimming to AntarcticaGet your copy of Third and Long today!Third and Long is the winner of the Independent Book Publishers Association Popular Fiction award.Bob Katz is the author of several acclaimed books, including Elaine's Circle, a non-fiction account of a dramatic year in the rural Alaska classroom of an innovative schoolteacher, the novel Hot Air, which was optioned by actor Michael Keaton and MGM for a movie, The Whistleblower, a nonfiction exploration of the world of college basketball referees, and, most recently, EZ and the Intangibles, a novel for middle readers. More at BobKatz.info."If John Steinbeck had known as much about sports as Bob Katz does, he would have been proud to have written Third and Long. Katz has offered us a smart, moving, beautiful and important book."--E. J. Dionne Jr., syndicated columnist, NPR commentator"A sly, lyrical novel (think Friday Night Lights meets All the Right Moves, only funny) . . . "--Sports Illustrated
Miracle on the 17th Green
Travis McKinley's life has drifted sideways. His job, his marriage, even his children all feel disconnected and distant. Has he really accomplished nothing of consequence in his life? One Christmas Day, Travis plays a round of golf and finds himself for the first time in the zone--playing like a pro. In astonishingly short order, Travis is catapulted into the PGA Senior Open at Pebble Beach, where he advances to the final round. And while his wife, his children, and a live television audience watch, a miracle takes place that changes Travis, and his family, forever.
Once a Runner
The undisputed classic of running novels and one of the most beloved sports books ever published, Once a Runner tells the story of an athlete's dreams amid the turmoil of the 60s and the Vietnam war. Inspired by the author's experience as a collegiate champion, the novel follows Quenton Cassidy, a competitive runner at fictional Southeastern University whose lifelong dream is to run a four-minute mile. He is less than a second away when the turmoil of the Vietnam War era intrudes into the staid recesses of his school's athletic department. After he becomes involved in an athletes' protest, Cassidy is suspended from his track team. Under the tutelage of his friend and mentor, Bruce Denton, a graduate student and former Olympic gold medalist, Cassidy gives up his scholarship, his girlfriend, and possibly his future to withdraw to a monastic retreat in the countryside and begin training for the race of his life against the greatest miler in history. A rare insider's account of the incredibly intense lives of elite distance runners, Once a Runner is an inspiring, funny, and spot-on tale of one individual's quest to become a champion.
Let's Play Ball
Miranda is a bright, attractive woman with an important government job, a nice home, and a prominent lawyer husband. Her fraternal twin sister, Jessica, is a sportswriter who has spent years sacrificing her social life and conventional career prospects to establish a magazine. Jessica's publication has finally caught on after she receives renown for an article she writes about local baseball star Manny Chavez and his perilous journey back to his native Cuba to retrieve his abducted son. Jessica, now engaged to Manny, invites Miranda, her husband, and their parents to join her in a luxury suite to watch the hometown Washington Filibusters take on their archrivals, the Florida Keys, in a championship game. As they are wined and dined by the team owner, Miranda envies her sister's seemingly perfect life and faces the reality that her own is a facade. But when the forces of revenge and corporate greed catch up to the "perfect" couple and blow their world apart, Miranda is suddenly thrust into a world of international politics. Let's Play Ball dramatizes the struggles of two ambitious sisters against the backdrops of immigration, global conflict, and the nation's pastime.
Let's Play Ball
Miranda is a bright, attractive woman with an important government job, a nice home, and a prominent lawyer husband. Her fraternal twin sister, Jessica, is a sportswriter who has spent years sacrificing her social life and conventional career prospects to establish a magazine. Jessica's publication has finally caught on after she receives renown for an article she writes about local baseball star Manny Chavez and his perilous journey back to his native Cuba to retrieve his abducted son. Jessica, now engaged to Manny, invites Miranda, her husband, and their parents to join her in a luxury suite to watch the hometown Washington Filibusters take on their archrivals, the Florida Keys, in a championship game. As they are wined and dined by the team owner, Miranda envies her sister's seemingly perfect life and faces the reality that her own is a facade. But when the forces of revenge and corporate greed catch up to the "perfect" couple and blow their world apart, Miranda is suddenly thrust into a world of international politics. Let's Play Ball dramatizes the struggles of two ambitious sisters against the backdrops of immigration, global conflict, and the nation's pastime.
Clutch
It has healed generations after times of war and throughout the depression. In more recent years, America's pastime has lost its prestige. Even so, baseball is still one of the most popular sports among youth all over the world. These kids don't care about contracts and don't cheat to be better at baseball. They still dream about playing for their favorite team. Zeke Morgan had the same dream. He and his best friend, Ronnie, dreamed of playing on the same diamond in the pros throughout their childhood. After a falling out and after fielding many of life's curve balls, Zeke Morgan followed that dream and made it his own. Follow young Zeke Morgan as he breaks into the world of baseball, makes a name for himself, and tries to resurrect a dream that died years earlier, while fending off a greedy and corrupt baseball system. Can he remain the pure and innocent baseball player he always wanted to be or will he fold under the dollar signs and glamour that are just within his reach?
Corbett Lake Diaries
J.E. Baker's Corbett Lake Diaries will transport you on a nostalgic trip through the "Golden Age" of fly-fishing and five-star wilderness lodges from the era of Roderick Haig-Brown and General Money. Along the way you'll experience fishing for grayling in the waters that drain into the Arctic Ocean, angling for trout in the big lakes of Interior British Columbia, and searching for steelhead and salmon in the waters along the Pacific Northwest. In Baker's short stories, you'll be introduced to a host of characters that the author meets through his connection with a very special fishing lodge, Corbett Lake. These insightful anecdotes approach the world of fishing and nature with reverence and humor. You'll long to travel these highways and byways for yourself.
Corbett Lake Diaries
J.E. Baker's Corbett Lake Diaries will transport you on a nostalgic trip through the "Golden Age" of fly-fishing and five-star wilderness lodges from the era of Roderick Haig-Brown and General Money. Along the way you'll experience fishing for grayling in the waters that drain into the Arctic Ocean, angling for trout in the big lakes of Interior British Columbia, and searching for steelhead and salmon in the waters along the Pacific Northwest. In Baker's short stories, you'll be introduced to a host of characters that the author meets through his connection with a very special fishing lodge, Corbett Lake. These insightful anecdotes approach the world of fishing and nature with reverence and humor. You'll long to travel these highways and byways for yourself.
The Caddie Who Played With Hickory
Before there were titanium woods and graphite shafts, golf clubs were made from the wood of hickory trees and had intriguing names like cleek, mashie and jigger. Golf was a game played not with high-tech equipment but with skill, finesse, and creativity. And the greatest hickory player of all time was Walter Hagen---until the day he met a teenage caddie at a country club outside Chicago. America's first touring golf professional, Hagen made (and spent) more prize money than his friends Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey earned from baseball and boxing during the Golden Age of Sports. In this novel, set in the halcyon post-war Midwest of 1946, Hagen comes to historic Midlothian Country Club as the champion he is---but also as a man handicapped by a secret. Waiting for him are two caddies. Harrison Cornell--a onetime rich playboy from the Bahamas--has a past; the other---Tommy O'Shea, a farm boy who caddies at the country club---may have a future . . . but only if he can somehow beat Hagen on the links, in one last game played with hickory. Cornell is a mystery man who appears from nowhere and presents himself as a "looper," a professional caddie. Soon everyone sees that he has a gift---within weeks he has improved the games of dozens of members. Only Tommy O'Shea, his eager pupil, knows Cornell's real motive for coming to the club: his grudge against Walter Hagen, over something that happened during the Second World War in the lovely paradise known as the Bahamas. As the playboy and the farm boy become friends, Harrison teaches Tommy the secrets of playing golf with hickory, along with lessons in life and love. But the shadow of Hagen, and the upcoming match, fall across the Midwest summer, and as the competition nears, Tommy's hopes for the future---and his love for a member's daughter---are threatened when the truth about Harrison's past is revealed. Not until the climax, played out in an exciting shot-for-shot match, will all the questions be answered and all the scores settled. As in his previous novel, The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan, author John Coyne has created a world rich in characters, action, and golf lore---this time including the fascinating history of hickory play. An entertaining, suspenseful read for anyone who loves the game, it is also a book that offers a pure dose of Midwestern soul, written by a new voice in golf literature who has firmly established himself as one of the leaders of the genre.
Safe at Home
Safe at Home is a heartwarming story about Trevor, an 11-year-old boy whose aged great-grandfather gives him a 1915 Babe Ruth baseball card valued at $50,000. Trevor's joy is threatened by the mysterious disappearance of the card and by his friends' skepticism about great-grandpa's claim of being the only man in baseball history to steal home off Babe Ruth. Eventually Trevor learns some priceless lessons about friendship, truth and forgiveness.
The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan
Returning as an honored guest to the exclusive country club where he worked in his youth, Jack Handley remembers the summer of '46 when he caddied for Ben Hogan in the last Chicago Open. Now a respected historian, Jack recounts to the assembled sons and daughters of members he once knew the dramatic match between the mysterious and charismatic Hogan and the young club pro he idealized. The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan is filled with dazzling descriptions of hole-by-hole match play drama, and laced with anecdotes from that golden age of sports. This bittersweet novel of friendship, lost love, and great golf is told through the eyes of a 14-year-old boy whose life is forever changed by one of the greatest players of the game.
Addled
Eden Rock Country Club is a grand New England institution, a lush haven of leisure and cocktails, where gossip and intrigue lurk discreetly behind a veil of old-world propriety. But one Fourth of July, a flock of geese descends on the club's manicured lawns; never fond of outsiders, the Eden Rock denizens find these new guests distinctly unwelcome. When Charles Lambert, a bond trader with a strong portfolio but a weak golf game, accidentally kills a goose with a wayward drive, he sets in motion a series of events that will leave the club and its members changed forever. His wife, Madeline, must face the mutterings of other members about the state of her marriage -- and his sanity. Meanwhile, their daughter, an animal rights activist, mounts a quixotic campaign to make the club go vegan, much to the annoyance of Vita, a talented, obsessive chef who has her own plans for the geese. A deftly observed social comedy, Addled is a rich and riotous story of old money, new ideas, and the power of passion to disrupt even the most orderly of worlds.
Back Porch Swing
Lance Stoler has some tough decisions to make. He's a highly recruited high school senior from a small town in eastern Kentucky. But playing basket ball isn't the only thing on Lance's mind. There's the girl he meets on a recruiting trip to Kansas?the basketball buddy who may have stepped over the line with recruiting rules, the coach who has questionable reputation and the pressure from family to sign with his parent's alma Mater. Family traditions and relationships are at stake. If you?ve ever found yourself caught between a rock and a hard place, if you enjoy the drama of high school sports, if you relate to the underdog, route for the little guy, you will love Back Porch Swing. In the spirit of Hoosiers and Chariots of Fire, Back Porch Swing delivers a heartwarming and enjoyable read where family values, character and integrity are tested.
Castro’s Curveball
Recently widowed and now retired, Billy Bryan is "coming to the end of many things." Then a long-forgotten scrapbook stirs memories of a distant past--and beckons him and his grown daughter on a reluctant journey to relive his role in history. In 1947 Bryan was playing winter ball in Cuba, his future as uncertain as the island country's. Then one fateful night Bryan witnessed a young student radical named Fidel unleash an amazing curveball. So begins Bryan's tug-of-war with destiny.
A Girl Becomes A Comma Like That
Rachel Spark is an irreverent, sexually eager, financially unstable thirty-year-old college instructor who moves back home when her mother is diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. As she tries to ease her mother, a perpetually cheerful woman, toward the inevitable, Rachel turns from one man to the next -- sometimes comically, sometimes catastrophically -- as if her own survival depended upon it. Ella Bloom, an adult student in Rachel's poetry class, has aspirations beyond her work at a local family planning clinic. But she spends her nights wondering why her husband kissed one of her colleagues and whether it will lead to a full-fledged affair. She is also preoccupied with one of her repeat patients, Georgia, a teenager whose frequent clinic visits speak volumes. What they all have in common is their desire for love, despite its many obstacles. A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That is a novel rife with wit and compassion. A provocative, assured new voice in literary fiction, Lisa Glatt eyes the yardsticks by which we constantly measure our world and ourselves -- devotion, lust, forgiveness, and courage.
The Year The Yankees Lost The Pennant
Decades before Field of Dreams there was The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, the classic baseball fable that became the hit movie and musical Damn Yankees. Now a new generation is ready to discover this delightful book, restored to its original title, with a new introduction by baseball writer Bill James. Baseball lovers everywhere can identify with Joe Boyd, a die-hard Washington Senators fan who puts his soul in hock to help them wrest the pennant away from the hated, all-conquering Yankees. Transformed by the sulfurous Mr. Applegate's satanic magic into twenty-two-year-old phenom Joe Hardy, he leads the hapless Senators in a torrid late-season pursuit of the men in pinstripes. Joe has until September 21st before the deal becomes final--and eternal. With the luscious temptress Lola to distract him, he'll have a hell of a time wriggling out of the bargain...
Everybody’s All-American
Gavin Grey is everyone's All-American. A star running back at the University of North Carolina in the late 1950s, he graces the covers of Time and LIFE magazines and appears on the "Ed Sullivan Show." Everyone wants a piece of him or to be around him to bask in his glory, including his nephew Donny, who narrates the story and is Gavin's only real confidant.After college, Gavin goes on to the NFL where he has a solid career. As his playing days wind down and the cheering stops, however, he finds the adjustment to life as an ex-athlete difficult to accept. His wife "Babs" goes off to work, becomes the primary breadwinner for the family while Gavin continues to trade on his memories of old times, when he was everybody's All-American.
Remembering Dud Dean
A fictional Maine guide who won many friends and admirers through the pages of Field & Stream magazine in the 1920s and '30s, Dud Dean is very much a product of his creator. Arthur Macdougall was an avid outdoorsman and a minister in Bingham, Maine, a tiny town perched on the reaches of the mighty Kennebec River. The tales in this book were compiled by Macdougall's son, Walter.
Bang the Drum Slowly
Henry Wiggen, hero of The Southpaw and the best-known fictional baseball player in America, is back again, throwing a baseball "with his arm and his brain and his memory and his bluff for the sake of his pocket and his family." More than a novel about baseball, Bang the Drum Slowly is about the friendship and the lives of a group of men as they each learn that a teammate is dying of cancer. Bang the Drum Slowly was chosen as one of the top one hundred sports books of all time by Sports Illustrated and appears on numerous other lists of best baseball fiction. In the introduction to this new Bison Books edition Mark Harris discusses the making of the classic 1973 film starring Robert DeNiro, based on his screen adaptation of the book. Also available in Bison Books editions are The Southpaw, It Looked Like For Ever.
Sometimes You See It Coming
Based in part on the life of baseball legend Ty Cobb, this book belongs in the pantheon of great baseball novels.John Barr is the kind of player who isn't supposed to exist anymore. An all-around superstar, he plays the game with a single-minded ferocity that makes his New York Mets team all but invincible. Yet Barr himself is a mystery with no past, no friends, no women, and no interests outside hitting a baseball as hard and as far as he can. Not even Ellie Jay, the jaded sportswriter who can out-think, out-drink, and out-write any man in the press box. She wants to think she admires Barr's skill on a ballfield, but suspects she might be in love with a man who isn't really there. Barr leads the Mets to one championship after another. Then chaos arrives in the person of new manager Charli Stanzi, well-known psychopath. Under Stanzi's tutelage, the team simply falls apart. Then Barr himself inexplicably starts to unravel. For the first time in his life, his formidable skills fail him, and only Ellie Jay and another can help - if he will let them. Hanging in the balance are his sanity, the World Series, and true love.
The Rider
The instant cult classic about biking, road racing, and the bicyclists who love their sport. Originally published in Holland in 1978, The Rider went on to sell more than 100,000 copies. Brilliantly conceived and written at a break-neck pace, it is a loving, imaginative, and, above all, passionate tribute to the art of bicycle road racing. Tim Krabb矇 begins this story at the very start of the Tour de Mont Aigoual, ready to race his rivals through the mountains of Central France. Over the course of the 150 pages that follows, Krabb矇 takes his bike 150 kilometers, and pulls his readers into the life of the sport he loves. The Rider is beloved as a bicycle odyssey, a literary masterpiece, and the ultimate book for bike lovers as well as the arm-chair sports enthusiast.
It Looked Like for Ever
Henry Wiggen, the bedraggled six-foot-three, 195-pound, left-handed pitcher for the New York Mammoths, returns to narrate another novel in his inimitable manner. Fans who loved him in Bang the Drum Slowly, The Southpaw, and A Ticket for a Seamstitch (all Bison Books) will cheer his comeback. Wiggen is now thirty-nine, a fading veteran with a floating fastball, a finicky prostate, and other intimations of mortality. Released from the Mammoths after nineteen years, the twenty-seventh winningest pitcher in baseball history (tied at 247 victories with Joseph J. "Iron Man" McGinnity and John Powell), Wiggen is not ready to hang up his glove. What impels Henry to pitch against Pate, to trek to California and as far as Japan? He still has a few seasons, a few innings left anyway. Is he principled or possessed? You'll have to decide for yourself as author Mark Harris plays out Wiggen's midlife crisis on familiar American turf: the baseball diamond.
