Novelist adult books

Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, Mickey Donovan finally achieves his childhood dream of playing baseball for the White Sox when he makes the team in 1919, a dream that is transformed into a nightmare by the infamous Black Sox scandal.

After returning from Gaudalcanal in 1944 with a missing leg and no money, Bill Veeck manages to hustle his way into buying the Philadelphia Athletics and recruits players from the Negro Leagues to create the greatest team in baseball history.

His quest to prove that the world-champion Chicago Cubs of 1908 met the amateur Iowa Baseball Confederacy in an epic game of more than two thousand innings brings Gideon Clarke and his friend Stan in touch with destiny. Reprint.

Twenty four short stories, two-thirds of which describe real teams, real players, and real situations. Annotations serve to identify the many references to the real world of early twentieth-century major league baseball. Includes some material on the Minneapolis Millers.

Presents a collection of stories about baseball players who play out their fantasies and dreams through the game and the discipline that surrounds it.

Lawrence Block, John Lescroart, and Elmore Leonard share stories about the mysterious deaths of coaches and players, agents and baseball dads in complex situations, and players who exhibit less than gentlemanly behavior.

A complete anthology of baseball fiction by Ring Lardner features short stories that capture the integral role of baseball in American life.

"This novel provides a blend of mystery thriller and baseball narrative. It tells the story of Felicity Lindsay, a small-town police officer who finds a murder victim on the beach. Her curiosity about the crime eventually leads Felicity and her father, the alcoholic manager of the major-league baseball team, into a confrontation with a drug cartel"--Provided by publisher.

Having fled his wife and life in Denver to avoid the results of a medical diagnosis, Frank Lofton becomes a sportswriter in Holyoke, Massachusetts, where he follows the fortunes of a minor-league baseball team and gets wind of an arson scam.

A tale based on the 1934 World Series tracing the machinations of legal genius Clarence Darrow to bring about the Cardinals win, an achievement also marked by the contributions of such figures as Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Henry Ford.

On the eighth birthday of Ethan "E.A". Allen, who lives with his mother and Gran in a Vermont town decades behind the rest of New England, a drifter named Teddy comes into their world, teaching E.A. how to play ball and the secrets of baseball.

When Frank Hearn, a down-on-his-luck bootlegger and tough guy looking to score big in 1920s America, gets his hand on a handwritten IOU for $7000 signed by Babe Ruth, he embarks on an odyssey from New Jersey to St. Petersburg, Florida, where the Yankees are about to begin spring training, in order to convince the Babe to give him the money.

Recounts the story of Mac "Suitcase" Sefton, a scout for the New York Yankees who discovers a left-handed pitcher named Jerry Yamada in a Japanese-American internment camp in the Arizona desert during World War II, his schemes to get Jerry released from the camp, and his taboo love for Jerry's sister Annie.

With his life torn apart by gambling allegations, a suspension from baseball, the breakup of his marriage, and facing the scorn of fans, former star pitcher Joe Singer holes up in Southern California trying to put his life back together.

A retired coach recounts the story of "Blockade Billy" Blakely, known for his skills as a catcher and also as a formidable batter, the only player to have his record erased from baseball history, and his time with the New Jersey Titans.

His preference for a peaceful life shattered by the untimely death of a business partner, baseball lover Joe Rice finds himself harassed about the whereabouts of a valuable Babe Ruth bat by an ex-mobster, an entrepreneur, and a gun-toting minister.

Journalist Sam Fowler steps off a train in Ohio and finds himself back in the year 1869, and he falls in with the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first professional baseball team, and accompanies on their first nationwide tour.

Howie Traveler, manager of the Cleveland Indians, and his Cuban-American star player, Jay Alcazar, have little interaction off the field until Traveler witnesses an encounter between Alcazar and a woman that ends in a rape charge.

In the sequel to If I Never Get Back, Samuel Clemens Fowler yearns to return to 1869 Ohio, where he had fallen in love with a beautiful Irish widow, and gets his wish when he is transported back through time to 1875, where he becomes caught up in the tumultuous events of the era.

This sports novel follows the career of baseball player Roy Hobbs, a natural with a bat whose dreams of playing in the big leagues are deferred by a youthful indiscretion, but who finally becomes a hero.

Growing up in the Bronx in the 1960s, Scooter Riley finds himself caught in the middle between his NYPD cop father and his ex-firefighter grandfather as he discovers that baseball holds the key to shaping his life.

Ray Kinsella's fanatic love of baseball drives him to build a baseball stadium in his corn field and kidnap the author, J.D. Salinger, and bring him to a baseball game.

A baseball story for a new generation traces the heroic abilities of an elusive baseball legend named John Barr and dwells on the cruel absurdity of a business peopled by millionaires with high school mentalities and sportswriters desperate for a quote.

A baseball scout, a remarkable player with a secret, and a Mafia hitman collide with violent and unpredictable results.

"With disarming intensity, humor, and great heart, Shawver tells the story of Dennis Birch, a washed-up thirty-four-year-old ballplayer turned minor league scout. At the request of his organization, he embarks on a plan to smuggle the hot left-handed pitcher Ramon Diego Sagasta out of Fidel Castro's Cuba. Sagasta plays for the Cuban National Team but just might be destined for American super-stardom. With this thought guiding him, and the hope that reflected glory will be his, Dennis agrees to lend more than a hand in the defection. Birch is both the narrator and a memorable character. His innocent belief in the rightness of his mission blinds him to some of its realities, and what at first seems as if it could lead to his name on a plaque in Coopertown's Hall of Fame, becomes a plunge into dangerous, sordid, and morally complex waters. It becomes excruciatingly clear that Cuba is much farther from the Florida Keys than the miles marked on a map"--Front flap.

Sport Sullivan begins the scam that fixes the 1919 World Series between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds.

Hotshot young college pitcher Jack Faber returns after a stint in a summer baseball league to find a new baseball coach who resents his success, cockiness, and talent and who sets out to destroy Jack's confidence in himself and his pitching ability.

The close-knit community of 1979 Cooperstown, New York is shaped by its members' faith, family values, and devotion to baseball until the construction of a baseball theme park brings in modern levels of commercialism and tests their old-world way of life.

A poignant portrayal of professional ballplayers' lives on and off the field during the sport's golden years in the 1950's.

It's the last game of the season, Billy Chapel, a seventeen season legend and guaranteed Hall-of-Famer, has always played for the love of the game, never money nor fame. Now, at the end of an amazing career, he finds himself playing his most crucial game. He has one last chance to prove who he is and what really matters in life.

A fictional portrait based on the life and times of an early twentieth century baseball player follows Luther "Dummy Taylor, a fading deafmute pitcher for the New York Giants, as he struggles to make a comeback with the baseball major leagues.

Gil--a devoted coach of an amateur baseball team whose pitcher is losing his arm, whose father is dying of cancer, and whose son doesn't need him--feels his chance for redemption is riding on the championship game, but unforeseen events will alter all their lives forever.

After a routine pop-up falls on his head, Hank decides that he's through with baseball, but has a tough time when he realizes that baseball is the only thing that's given meaning to his life.

A third major baseball league tries to survive, but World War II decimates it by 1943.

A baseball star and his older brother struggle with their relationship as Joe, the Chicago Cubs third baseman, makes a mess out of his charmed life.

A coming-of-age story about a great baseball pitcher as he works his way from the bush league to the World Series.

In 1912, Mickey Rawlings reports for his first day as a Boston Red Sox player, only to discover a faceless body in the empty stadium. When the police name him as a suspect, he knows he must clear his name or give up baseball and his freedom. This book is the first of this series featuring baseball player Mickey Rawlings. Other titles include, Hanging Curve and Murder at Ebbets Field and many others.

It's 1960, and the only thing that can save in-debt manager Cookie Palisetti and his sinking pro baseball team is getting his star pitcher out of prison. When the courts won't show mercy, Cookie plans an exhibition game against the prison team - as cover for the wildest, most unlikely jailbreak ever!.

When a 9-year-old girl becomes lost on a hike on the Appalachian Trail, she relies on her courage and faith, as she imagines her hero, baseball pitcher Tom Gordon, is with her.

Returning to Los Angeles from a trip to the Dominican Republic with Alberto Cruz, the teenage baseball star she discovered, and seductive developer Joe Galinis, hard-living female baseball scout Cassidy Sanderson discovers that they all have become entangled in a blackmail scheme marked by violence, voodoo, deception, and betrayal.

Draws a moving parallel between Jackie Robinson's 1947 experiences with the Dodgers as the first African American to play major league baseball and the personal life of nineteen-year-old Vinnie, a Dodgers ball boy.

The Boston Red Sox's hottest, young player, Ron Kane alters the team's fortune when his ability as a "killer" pitcher extends off the field, as General Manager Neville Wulfmeyer suddenly realizes, when the FBI, media, and mobsters all become involved.

The author of the legendary "Sidd Finch" baseball sports hoax in Sports Illustrated transforms the entire incident into a baseball fairy tale--a novel that probes baseball's capacity to mystify, captivate, and deceive Americans. Reprint.

Follows the coming-of-age of a young man who makes a special connection with his grandfather at the end of the latter's life, a period marked by the grandfather's hero-worship of Babe Ruth and memories about one of the athlete's early home runs.

When a cryptic poem left by his grandfather leads him to an old baseball, Harvard professor Seth Stein is taken back in time to 1950s New York and to the greatest baseball game ever played, where all of his questions are answered.

Determined to protect her son, who has been blessed with an amazing talent, from overly enthusiastic baseball scouts, difficult coaches, and greedy agents, a single mother uses wisdom and love to help her son make it to the major leagues on their own terms.

Walter Innis, the son of a violent ex-baseball star and an unhappy, unfaithful woman, finds an escape from and a new understanding of his dysfunctional past when he takes over as a Little League baseball coach.

A fictional memoir inspired by the life of the iconic baseball star places a surprised late Mantle in heaven, where he confesses the truth about how he hurt his loved ones, alienated his fans, succumbed to alcoholism, and otherwise fell short of deserving the adulation directed toward him throughout his career.

This graphic novel follows a Jewish barnstorming baseball team, called the Stars of David, during the 1920s.

While rookie Henry Spencer struggles to reconcile Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle with major league baseball, the eccentric residents of a trailer park wonder if Henry is the latest in a line of reincarnated spirits that can be traced back to Isaac Newton.

In early twentieth century Brooklyn, Ruby endures many hardships including the flu epidemic, the death of family members, and even starvation, until her pitching talents open new opportunities in the changing world of sports for women.

Chronicles the lives of Jews who, in the 1920s, leave Krimsk for America, where they discover gambling, graft, and baseball.

An abandoned baby is found in the clubhouse at Fenway Park. The nurses at Deaconess name him Ted Williams, what else? A promising minor league pitcher goes missing. A player agent is caught up in a web of blackmail. A woman's body turns up in the Back Bay fens. Enter Rocky Patel, Boston Homicide Detective First Grade, ordered to connect the dots. And joining him out of left field, an anonymous blogger who knows too much.

Abilene and Austin, a brother and sister feeling stultified by the small-town Texan life imposed on them by their parents, dream of escape, with Abilene becoming desperately and dangerously obsessed with helping her brother become a major league pitcher.

Recognized as a prodigy pitcher in spite of his autism, seventeen-year-old Mickey Tussler is recruited for a minor-league affiliate of the Boston Braves but finds his memories of an abusive father, heckling peers, and inability to socialize hampering his prospects.