Right to Life


Jack Ketchum - 1998
    They also seem to know where she lives, where she teaches, where she was born, who her lover is—even where her father plays golf on the weekends. They tell her about a mysterious worldwide Organization devoted to white slavery and what happens to those slaves who try to run away. What happens to their families and those they love.That's what Sara is now. Their slave.They show her what happens if she tries to disobey.She sleeps in a coffin-like box in the basement.She's fed according to their whim. Abused according to their whim.They involve her in a brutal murder.That's just the beginning. Because Stephen and Katherine Teach have terrible plans for Sara.And her baby.Like his novels Joyride, Stranglehold, The Girl Next Door, and Cover, Right to Life is a descent into madness and human evil which is all the more harrowing because it's based on fact. Sara's ordeal really happened to somebody just like you and me and it's one that is vividly rendered. So consider yourself warned. This is disturbing, graphic writing.Not for the timid.Like life.

The Speed Queen


Stewart O'Nan - 1997
    Grove Press is proud to reissue his haunting noir novel The Speed Queen. The Speed Queen is the gripping story of a twisted love triangle's drug-fueled killing spree across the desert plains, told in the voice of Oklahoma death-row inmate Marjorie Standiford, who is recounting her experiences for a best-selling horror writer researching the murders. It's a chilling, unputdownable crime novel in the tradition of James M. Cain -- a voyage into the dark soul of the American West.

Voodoo Heart


Scott Snyder - 2006
    But in Snyder’s wondrous imagination there’s a thin membrane between the whimsical and the disturbing: the unlikely affair between a famous actress—in hiding after surgery—and a sporting goods salesman takes an ominous turn just as she begins to heal; an engaged couple’s relationship is fractured when one of them becomes obsessed with an inmate at the women’s prison next door. Dark, funny, powerful, this debut collection underscores the remarkable gifts of a fiercely original young writer.From the Hardcover edition.

Dispatch


Bentley Little - 2005
    Then he's offered a job to do it for a living. It consumes his time, his mind, and eventually, his soul. Jason really should have stuck with freelance.

White Man's Grave


Richard Dooling - 1994
    Randall, a bankruptcy lawyer, is the warlord of his world, a shark in a fishbowl, exercising power with mad, relentless, hilarious glee; Boone, an American innocent abroad, journeys to the African bush, protected by the twin charms of the passport and the almighty dollar. In seeking Michael, both men find much more than they bargain for.A satire, steeped in irony, chronicles the misadventures of Boone Westfall, who wanders through West Africa encountering witches, angry ancestors, and bad medicine in search of his missing friend Michael Killigan, whose high-powered banker father is conducting his own search.

Veeck As In Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck


Bill Veeck - 1962
    His classic autobiography, written with the talented sportswriter Ed Linn, is an uproarious book packed with information about the history of baseball and tales of players and owners, including some of the most entertaining stories in all of sports literature.

The Ax


Donald E. Westlake - 1997
    Until now. Downsized from his job, Devore is slipping away: from his wife, his family, and from all civilized norms of behavior. He wants his life back, and will do anything to get it. In this relentlessly fascinating novel, the masterful Westlake takes readers on a journey of obsession and outrage inside a quiet man's desperate world.

Freedomland


Richard Price - 1998
    But then comes the horrifying twist: Her young son was asleep in the back seat, and he has now disappeared into the night.So begins Richard Price's electrifying new novel, a tale set on the same turf--Dempsey, New Jersey--as Clockers. Assigned to investigate the case of Brenda Martin's missing child is detective Lorenzo Council, a local son of the very housing project targeted as the scene of the crime. Under a white-hot media glare, Lorenzo launches an all-out search for the abducted boy, even as he quietly explores a different possibility: Does Brenda Martin know a lot more about her son's disappearance than she's admitting?Right behind Lorenzo is Jesse Haus, an ambitious young reporter from the city's evening paper. Almost immediately, Jesse suspects Brenda of hiding something. Relentlessly, she works her way into the distraught mother's fragile world, befriending her even as she looks for the chance to break the biggest story of her career.As the search for the alleged carjacker intensifies, so does the simmering racial tension between Dempsey and its mostly white neighbor, Gannon. And when the Gannon police arrest a black man from Dempsey and declare him a suspect, the animosity between the two cities threatens to boil over into violence. With the media swarming and the mood turning increasingly ugly, Lorenzo must take desperate measures to get to the bottom of Brenda Martin's story.At once a suspenseful mystery and a brilliant portrait of two cities locked in a death-grip of explosive rage, Freedomland reveals the heart of the urban American experience--dislocated, furious, yearning--as never before. Richard Price has created a vibrant, gut-wrenching masterpiece whose images will remain long after the final, devastating pages.From the Hardcover edition.

Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Lineups: A Complete Guide to the Best, Worst, and Most Memorable Players to Ever Grace the Major Leagues


Rob Neyer - 2003
    You'll find plenty of food for thought -- and argument! -- in Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Lineups. • All-time Red Sox starting pitcher -- Pedro or the Rocket? • Gold Glovers -- who looked like one, who was one, and who ought to have been one? • Lopsided trades that'll sting forever, and phenoms who seemed so real • Classic nicknames -- from "Charlie Hustle" to "Big Hurt" to "The Mad Hungarian" Neyer presents a series of lineups for each franchise -- from the All-Time and the All-Rookie to the All-Bust and the Traded Away. In notes, sidebars, and essays, he explores the careers of players both famous and obscure. The book includes information on all thirty current teams, as well as a special section covering legendary clubs like the Brooklyn Dodgers and Washington Senators. Neyer's Big Book is an unparalleled reference for settling the debates that arise every day in the lives of baseball fans.

Ancient Shores


Jack McDevitt - 1996
    Tom Lasker did what any farmer would have done. He dug it up. And discovered a boat, made of a fiberglass-like material with an utterly impossible atomic number. What it was doing buried under a dozen feet of prairie soil two thousand miles from any ocean, no one knew. True, Tom Lasker's wheat field had once been on the shoreline of a great inland sea, but that was a long time ago -- ten thousand years ago.A return to science fiction on a grand scale, reminiscent of the best of Heinlein, Simak, and Clarke, Ancient Shores is the most ambitious and exciting SF triumph of the decade, a bold speculative adventure that does not shrink from the big questions -- and the big answers.

Werewolves in Their Youth


Michael Chabon - 1999
    Caught at moments of change, Chabon's men and women, children and husbands and wives, all face small but momentous decisions. They are caught in events that will crystallize and define their lives forever, and with each, Michael Chabon brings his unique vision and uncanny understanding of our deepest mysteries and our greatest fears.

No Safe Place


Richard North Patterson - 1998
    Kilcannon believes he can make the system work. And he just may die trying. Driven by the violent nightmare of his childhood, fueled by forces that few could understand, and burdened by secrets no one must know, Kilcannon is running for President--and entering the crucial battleground of California with seven days to go. But for Kilcannon, there are hurdles that his courage, charisma, and compassion may not overcome: the network correspondent he still loves; the reporter bent on their exposure; the rival who'll do anything to win; and the fanatic who believes that he must murder Kilcannon to protect the right to life.

A Day In The Bleachers


Arnold Hano - 1954
    Here are the spectacular exploits of the Indians and Giants, and of a young player named Willie Mays, who made the most-talked-about catch in baseball history.

Mohawk


Richard Russo - 1986
    Ranging over three generations—and clustered mainly in two clans, the Grouses and the Gaffneys—these remarkably various lives share only the common human dilemmas and the awesome physical and emotional presence of Mohawk itself.For this is a town like Winesburg, Ohio or Our Town, in our time, that encompasses a plethora of characters, events and mysteries. At once honestly tragic and sharply, genuinely funny, Mohawk captures life, then affirms it.

The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty: The Game, the Team, and the Cost of Greatness


Buster Olney - 2004
    With four World Series championships in five seasons and a deep bench of legends and comers -- Clemens, Rivera, Williams, Soriano, Jeter, O'Neill -- they dominated the major leagues.For the members of the team, though, baseball Yankees-style was a pressure cooker of anxiety, expectation, and infighting. As the spending and emotion spiraled, careers were made and broken, friendships began and ended, and a sports dynasty rose and fell.In The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, Buster Olney tracks the Yankees through these tumultuous seasons and into the scandals and disappointments of 2004, providing insightful portraits of the stars, the foot soldiers, the coaches, the manager, and the Boss himself. With unparalleled knowledge of the game and an insider's familiarity with the team, Olney also advances a compelling argument that the philosophy that made the Yankees great was inherently unsustainable, ultimately harmful to the sport, and led inevitably to that warm autumn night in Arizona -- the last night of the Yankee dynasty.