But how about Alex Rodriguez, Jeter's teammate, former American League MVP, and probable future Hall of Famer? Many would argue he's even better than Jeter. And what about Jeter's seemingly unassailable status as one of the greatest Yankees of all time? Such discussions highlight one of the great joys of being a baseball fan: arguing over who's really great and who falls just short, who doesn't get the respect he deserves and who gets too much. In other words, who's overrated and who's underrated. In The Stark Truth, baseball analyst, writer, and researcher Jayson Stark of ESPN considers the entire history of professional baseball and picks the most overblown and underappreciated players in the history of the game. His results, based on extensive research using both traditional and more modern methods of evaluating baseball players and performance, are provocative, entertaining, and go a long way toward settling many of baseball's most persistent debates. No book can hope to settle every baseball argument, but The Stark Truth: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players in Baseball History takes one of baseball's most enduring debates and provides some compelling and stunning clarity.

    From Neil Gaiman and M. R. James to Muriel Spark and E. Nesbit, there are stories here to make the hardiest soul quail - so find a comfy chair, lock the door, ignore the cold breath on your neck and get ready to welcome in the real spirits of Christmas.

    -- so when his assistant tells him about a ghost for sale on an online auction site, he immediately puts in a bid and purchases it. The black, heart-shaped box that Coyne receives in the mail not only contains the suit of a dead man but also his vengeance-obsessed spirit. The ghost, it turns out, is the stepfather of a young groupie who committed suicide after the 54-year-old Coyne callously used her up and threw her away. Now, determined to kill Coyne and anyone who aids him, the merciless ghost of Craddock McDermott begins his assault on the rocker's sanity.

    Written in the tradition of classic English ghost tales, "Winterbay Abbey" is an unsettling Gothic thriller.Will Larson has one last chance to save his stagnant career as an architect: design a grand restoration for a long-abandoned abbey. Looming above the breathtaking, windswept coast of Maine, Winterbay Abbey offers a picturesque spot for a charming hotel. But the locals harbor a peculiar distaste for the ruined Gothic convent. After witnessing a drowning within sight of the abbey, Will wonders why the police seem disinterested in the case. He begins looking deeper into the incident, gradually uncovering chilling secrets behind the old nunnery's walls. Will's wife, Emily, becomes convinced the drowning is a ghostly replay of a forgotten death. But their investigation into the abbey's frightening history results in a tragic end with no escape from Winterbay's dark curse.

    The most she has to worry about is finding a way to fix a leaky faucet without a budget for a plumber. The next thing Libby knows she’s standing at the foot of her son’s bed completely see-through!Libby can’t remember what happened to her. Is she dead? She doesn’t know for sure because she can’t find her body, and the last place she remembers being, the local hardware store, instead of her own body, she finds the corpse of the store’s owner, husband to the mayor of her small town.In order to solve the mystery surrounding her disappearance, Libby must figure out who killed George Walsh. Along the way, she gets help from her reclusive neighbor, Ian McClain, who has a secret of his own.

    Since Christopher's ancestor Oliver Hedgewood built the house in the 1800s, many spirits have taken up residence in "the Moving House," including horror author Rex Garrote, who'd burned to death in his private library. Christopher Hedgewood and Sara Jane Amblin, inventor of the Recurrence Field, return to Garrote House one final time before it's relocated to Ghostland.They've both witnessed its ghosts many times. But neither of them have come at night, when the Moving House's most dangerous hauntings come alive.

    Hunted for a crime she did not commit and with a price on her head she has survived this long because she didn’t allow anyone to get too close. She’d been betrayed before, a pain she never wanted to experience again. But she is about to learn the hard way that fate is a fickle and capricious creature. When Sam, the one man she never thought she’d never see again, lands in her lap with a serious case of amnesia and the message ‘find Olivia’ scrawled across his arm, she finds herself facing the past she tried so hard to run from. Even knowing its a bad idea she reluctantly agrees to help him recover his memories and find the mysterious ‘Olivia’ so that she can send him on his way with a clear conscience, sounds so simple, right? There’s just one problem. Sam’s the one who betrayed her, only he has no memory of those events at all. Suddenly everything isn’t so black and white and the more of Sam’s memories they recover the more she questions her own memories of those dark days. Pursued by Angels and Demons alike as they tried to piece back together Sam’s damaged mind, Scarlett finds the lines blurring. Unable to tell friend from foe, she has no idea who to trust with her life and Sam’s, but the closer they get to the answers the more she comes to realize that the one person she needs the most is the one who hurt her in the worst way. When her enemies begin to close in she is faced with a choice, save herself or risk everything for the man who betrayed her, knowing that it may cost her her life.

    Wrenching story with a happy ending.

    Set in coal mines and remote farm cabins, in hidden hollows and on mountain tops, some of these stories look back to the days when West Virginia was first settled; others reflect the rancor and brutality of the Civil War. But most of these tales guide us through the recent past of the uncommonly rich folk heritage of West Virginia. This

    Notoriously haunted, it has remained empty until college-bound Jess Perry and three of her peers gather to take part in a month-long study on the paranormal. Jess, who talks to ghosts, quickly bonds with her fellow test subjects. One is a girl possessed. Another just wants to forget. The third is a guy who really knows how to turn up the August heat, not to mention Jess’s heart rate…when he’s not resurrecting the dead. The study soon turns into something far more sinister when they discover that Siler House and the dark forces within are determined to keep them forever. In order to escape, Jess and the others will have to open themselves up to the true horror of Siler House and channel the very evil that has welcomed them all.

    A pale, thin boy is haunting his every step but every time he tries to confront the boy he disappears. And what of the chilling scream and desperate sobbing only he can hear?His quest leads him eventually to the old lady of Kittiscar Hall, where he discovers something far more terrible at work than he could ever have imagined.

    A husband, a wife, a baby on the way.But something will stop them from being happy as they move into their new house: the power of the undead that roam the halls of their home.The demons that have come to claim them. The darkness that seeks to destroy them.The haunted.

    In this extended interview, Getlen spoke to Carlin about all the subjects above and more, finding the veteran comic, who changed the way comedians approach the art of stand-up comedy several times over the course of his remarkable fifty-year career, to be even more intelligent and contemplative than one might expect. Carlin never shied away from difficult subjects, answering every question as if he had been mulling over the topic at hand for years before reaching his well-stated conclusion. Conversations with Carlin highlights the comedian’s anti-authoritarian views - what he would refer to as his “outsidership” - on almost every page, and features his extensive thoughts on the topics most closely associated with him, comedy and words. But the book also presents sides of the man that his fans have rarely, if ever, seen before, as he discusses topics like the importance to him of romantic love - George was with the same woman for almost four decades, until her death in 1997 - and the conditions under which he would put his life on the line and go off to war. Conversations with Carlin will be a revelation for longtime fans, providing one of the most in-depth looks yet at this brilliant comedy icon, while also serving as the perfect introduction for those just now discovering George Carlin and his vast influence on the comedy world. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Larry Getlen is a veteran journalist who has written for TIME, Esquire, New York Magazine, Radar, and the New York Post. He’s also a comedy writer and former stand-up comedian who has appeared on “Chappelle’s Show,” and was once booed off-stage at the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem. He lives in New York City. Follow him on Twitter @larrygetlen.

    Now, no one remembers her hardworking life and her grand dreams--but she remembers. She remembers everything. Emma Rose still walks the coves and cliffs of her village, one hundred years after her death . . . and she doesn't plan on leaving.But when a determined hunter arrives with instructions to "clean" Emma Rose out of her haunt, the stately Lambry mansion, death suddenly isn't the worst fate imaginable. Emma Rose refuses to be hounded from the only place she's ever found peace, even if it means waging a war on the living . . . and the dead.Lyrical and haunting, this spellbinding American ghost story alternates between Emma Rose's life and afterlife as the past and present become entwined in a compelling tale of love, loss, and tenacity over a century in the making.

    She Cooks. Lottie Roberts is restless and lonely. She's been sitting on her bones since the Civil War, waiting for her ticket to heaven until... Justine Hale and her family take up residence in Lottie's two-hundred-year-old plantation house. Lottie senses in Justine a kindred spirit--filled with heartache and in reduced circumstances--which Lottie considers mirrors her own situation exactly. Yet Justine is trying to do the right thing. Else why is she burdened with a bankrupt mother without an ounce of common sense? Or an ex mother-in-law who looks like a pickled beet with a tongue sharper than a hatchet? And where is the father of the recalcitrant eleven year-old boy and the eight-year-old afraid of her own shadow? Justine needs help and Lottie is of a mind to provide it. But before Lottie can say squat and Justine even unlocks the front door, Tucker Highsmith shows up to steal her thunder. His dark eyes, lazy grin, and sexy Alabama drawl coupled with the dern braggart's Mr. Fix-it talents just might be the answer to all of Justine's problems. Or maybe not... Because Lottie has her own agenda, one she's been hoping and praying for since she found her bones on a hidden staircase.