Nook Daily Find 5/26

The Entitled ($1.99 Kindle, $2.99 B&N), by Frank Deford [Sourcebooks Landmark], is the Nook Daily Find, better than price matched on Kindle. There are two editions at Amazon (both on sale), but I've linked in the most recent one here (it is the newer KF8 format, rather than the original mobi-only format). I picked this up last year (the older edition), when it was briefly free, but haven't read it yet.

Book Description
Howie Traveler never made it as a player-his one major league hit and .091 batting average attest to that. He was cursed with that worst of professional maladies, the ill fortune of almost.

Now after years of struggling up the coaching ladder, Howie's finally been given his shot: as manager of the Cleveland Indians. But America's pastime has changed. Whether Howie can spot a small flaw in a batter's swing won't matter if he can't manage his superstar outfielder Jay Alcazar, a slugger with enormous talent (and an ego to match).

No crisis on the field fazes Jay and no woman off the field ever rejects him. But one night at the hotel Howie sees something at Jay's door he wishes he hadn't...and it leaves Howie with an impossible choice.

From six-time National Sportswriter of the Year and NPR commentator Frank Deford comes a richly detailed, page-turning tale that takes you deep into America's game. From the dugouts to the tabloid scandals, from the lights of the field to the glare of the media, The Entitled is the great novel of baseball's modern era.

UK Kindle Daily Deal 5/19

I Am The Secret Footballer (£0.99 UK), by The Secret Footballer, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $4.39).

Book Description
"It is often said that 95% of what happens in football goes on behind closed doors. Many of these stories I shouldn't be telling you about. But I will."

Who is The Secret Footballer? Only a few people know the true identity of the man inside the game. But whoever he is - and whoever he plays for - he is always honest, always fearless and always opinionated.

Now, for the first time, he reveals everything you need to know about the hidden world of professional football - the extraordinary highs, the desperate lows, and what it's really like to do the job most of us can only dream of.

Month End Bargain Books

Since it's the end of the month and it takes me quite a bit of time to look up books on B&N, Kobo, etc, to check for matching prices, I'm going to skip that for today's posts. I've linked both stores here, for those that prefer those formats; I suspect some of the larger publishers will have matching prices in all the stores (definitely Random House, which is still under Agency Pricing).

She's Come Undone ($2.99), by Wally Lamb [Atria/Simon and Schuster], an Oprah's Book Club selection.

Book Description
In this extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, Wally Lamb invites us to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years.

"Mine is a story of craving: an unreliable account of lusts and troubles that began, somehow, in 1956 on the day our free television was delivered. . ."

Meet Dolores Price. She’s thirteen, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood good-bye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she’s determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before really going belly-up.

At once a fragile girl and a hard-edged cynic, so tough to love yet so inimitably lovable, Dolores is as poignantly real as our own imperfections. She’s Come Undone includes a promise: you will never forget Dolores Price.

Portuguese Irregular Verbs ($3.99), the first Professor Dr von Igelfeld Entertainment novel by Alexander Mccall Smith and Iain Mcintosh (Illustrator) [Anchor/Random House]

Book Description
The Professor Dr. von Igelfeld Entertainment series slyly skewers academia, chronicling the comic misadventures of the endearingly awkward Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, and his long-suffering colleagues at the Institute of Romantic Philology in Germany.

Readers who fell in love with Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, now have new cause for celebration in the protagonist of these three light-footed comic novels by Alexander McCall Smith. Welcome to the insane and rarified world of Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld of the Institute of Romance Philology. Von Igelfeld is engaged in a never-ending quest to win the respect he feels certain he is due–a quest which has the tendency to go hilariously astray.

In Portuguese Irregular Verbs, Professor Dr von Igelfeld learns to play tennis, and forces a college chum to enter into a duel that results in a nipped nose. He also takes a field trip to Ireland where he becomes acquainted with the rich world of archaic Irishisms, and he develops an aching infatuation with a Dentist fatale. Along the way, he takes two ill-fated Italian sojourns, the first merely uncomfortable, the second definitely dangerous.

Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season ($2.99), by Jonathan Eig [Simon and Schuster], looks like a must read for those who saw the movie (42).

Book Description
April 15, 1947, marked the most important opening day in baseball history. When Jackie Robinson stepped onto the diamond that afternoon at Ebbets Field, he became the first black man to break into major-league baseball in the twentieth century. World War II had just ended. Democracy had triumphed. Now Americans were beginning to press for justice on the home front -- and Robinson had a chance to lead the way.
He was an unlikely hero. He had little experience in organized baseball. His swing was far from graceful. And he was assigned to play first base, a position he had never tried before that season. But the biggest concern was his temper. Robinson was an angry man who played an aggressive style of ball. In order to succeed he would have to control himself in the face of what promised to be a brutal assault by opponents of integration.

In Opening Day, Jonathan Eig tells the true story behind the national pastime's most sacred myth. Along the way he offers new insights into events of sixty years ago and punctures some familiar legends. Was it true that the St. Louis Cardinals plotted to boycott their first home game against the Brooklyn Dodgers? Was Pee Wee Reese really Robinson's closest ally on the team? Was Dixie Walker his greatest foe? How did Robinson handle the extraordinary stress of being the only black man in baseball and still manage to perform so well on the field? Opening Day is also the story of a team of underdogs that came together against tremendous odds to capture the pennant. Facing the powerful New York Yankees, Robinson and the Dodgers battled to the seventh game in one of the most thrilling World Series competitions of all time.

Drawing on interviews with surviving players, sportswriters, and eyewitnesses, as well as newly discovered material from archives around the country, Jonathan Eig presents a fresh portrait of a ferocious competitor who embodied integration's promise and helped launch the modern civil-rights era. Full of new details and thrilling action, Opening Day brings to life baseball's ultimate story.

Reporting at Wit's End ($2.99), by St. Clair McKelway [Bloomsbury]

Book Description
"Why does A. J. Liebling remain a vibrant role model for writers while the superb, prolific St. Clair McKelway has been sorely forgotten?" James Wolcott asked this question in a recent review of the Complete New Yorker on DVD. Anyone who has read a single paragraph of McKelway's work would struggle to provide an answer.

His articles for the New Yorker were defined by their clean language and incomporable wit, by his love of New York's rough edges and his affection for the working man (whether that work was come by honestly or not). Like Joseph Mitchell and A. J. Liebling, McKelway combined the unflagging curiosity of a great reporter with the narrative flair of a master storyteller. William Shawn, the magazine's long-time editor, described him as a writer with the "lightest of light touches." His style is so striking, Shawn went on to say, that "it was too odd to be imitated."

The pieces collected here are drawn from two of McKelway's books--True Tales from the Annals of Crime and Rascality (1951) and The Big Little Man from Brooklyn (1969). His subjects are the small players who in their particulars defined life in New York during the 36 years McKelway wrote: the junkmen, boxing cornermen, counterfeiters, con artists, fire marshals, priests, and beat cops and detectives. The "rascals."

An amazing portrait of a long forgotten New York by the reporter who helped establish and utterly defined New Yorker "fact writing," Untitled Collection is long overdue celebration of a truly gifted writer.

Cook Yourself Thin: Skinny Meals You Can Make in Minutes ($1.99), by Lifetime Television [Hyperion]

Book Description
Lose weight without losing your mind!

Cook Yourself Thin, a #1 New York Times bestseller, is a healthy, delicious way to drop a dress size without all the gimmicks. Eighty easy, accessible recipes teach readers how to cut calories without compromising taste.

For some of us, losing weight has always been a struggle. The challenge: figuring out how to cook healthy, low-fat foods that won't leave you hungry, bored, or running for a gallon of ice cream! Cook Yourself Thin shows how to cut calories, change diets, and improve health without sacrificing the foods we love.

Cook Yourself Thin is not a fad diet. It gives skinny alternatives to your cravings. You can't live without your chocolate cake or mac 'n' cheese You don't have to! There's never enough time to cook Cook Yourself Thin keeps it simple&dbquo;Ÿwith easy instructions and fun recipes you'll want to make again and again.

What are you waiting for? Cook Yourself Thin!

Forgotten Sacrifice: The Arctic Convoys of World War II ($2.99), by Michael Walling [Osprey Publishing]

Book Description
Hitler called Norway the “Zone of Destiny” for Nazi Germany because convoys from Churchill's Britain and Roosevelt's United States supplied Stalin’s Soviet Russia with critical equipment and foodstuffs during the darkest days of the German invasion.

The words "Murmansk Run" conjure visions of ice-laden ships and thoughts of freezing to death in seconds. For five long years, thousands of men and women fought ferociously in the coldest corner of hell on earth. Some fought for survival, some struggled to help others survive, and some sought to crush their enemies. If man-made death didn't get you, the Arctic's weapons of ice and cold would. These natural weapons killed regardless of whose side you were on or how just was your cause. No one escaped unscathed. Author Mike Walling captures the Arctic convoys’ bitter essence in Forgotten Sacrifice.

The story launches in October 1939, when Germany and the Soviet Union began diplomatic maneuvering. The action accelerates with Winston Churchill's decision in 1941 to provide supplies to Soviet forces battling the German invasion. From this point until the closing days of WWII in spring 1945, an unremitting sea battle raged within the confines of the always-lethal, ever-shifting Arctic ice pack and the savage Scandinavian coastline. Nearly 4.5 million tons of supplies were moved in 77 convoys over the course of 5 years in order to help the Soviet war effort. The Allies fought to keep the sea lanes open to Murmansk while the Germans were determined to slaughter every ship which dared to make the attempt. By the end of the convoys, 98 ships had been lost. Forgotten Sacrifice reveals a timeless tale of determination, heroism, sacrifice, and the strength of the human spirit.

All three novels in the End/Jonshua Jordan series by Tim LaHaye and Craig Parshall [Zondervan] are on sale for $1.99 apiece.

Edge of Apocalypse (was free Fall '10)

Joshua Jordan, former U.S. spy-plane hero now turned weapons designer has come up with a devastatingly effective new missile defense system -- the Return to Sender laser weapon. But global forces are mounting against America, and corrupt White House and Capitol Hill leaders are willing to do anything to stop the nation's impending economic catastrophe -- including selling-out Joshua and his weapon. As world events begin setting the stage for the 'end of days,' Joshua is forced to consider not only the truth of the biblical prophecies preached by the pastor of his brilliant attorney- wife, but also what gut-wrenching price he is willing to pay to save the nation he loves.

Thunder of Heaven

The End Series by New York Times bestselling author Tim LaHaye and Craig Parshall is an epic thrill ride ripped from today's headlines and filtered through Scriptural prophecy. As world events begin setting the stage for the 'end of days' foretold in Revelation, Joshua Jordan must weigh the personal price he must pay to save the nation he loves. This eBook will appeal to the tens of millions of fans who have already made Tim LaHaye a household name and one of the best selling authors of all time. Thunder of Heaven is a return to form for Tim LaHaye, whose previous prophetic fiction series, Left Behind, has sold roughly 70 million copies. Those who have read Left Behind and who are eager for more highly charged fiction based on biblical prophesies will embrace Thunder of Heaven for the same reasons that turned Left Behind into the world's most celebrated publishing phenomenons of the last two decades

Brink of Chaos

Joshua Jordan remains in Israel during his self-imposed 'exile' out of the reach of U.S. authorities who have trumped-up false criminal treason charges against him. His wife, Abigail, continues to lead the Roundtable to prove the innocence of her husband.

Following the nuclear attack by Russia, Israel is cleaning up the bodies of dead enemy soldiers for 7 months and setting out on its 7 year plan---both per the prophecies in Ezekiel. As corruption in high government offices threaten to block the election of a worthy presidential candidate by all means necessary---including the unthinkable---Israel's leadership is tempted to sign a 'peace' proposal initiated by the UN under the authority of Coliquin. After he discusses this plan with Pastor Peter Campbell, Joshua is convinced Coliquin may well be the prophesied Anti-Christ and that his peace plan is a trap to destroy Israel.

Are the recurring dreams Joshua has had about the coming rapture from God. And is the end sooner than anyone expects?

The Professor and the Madman ($1.99), by Simon Winchester [HarperCollins]

Book Description
The Professor and the Madman, masterfully researched and eloquently written, is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary -- and literary history. The compilation of the OED, begun in 1857, was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, discovered that one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand. When the committee insisted on honoring him, a shocking truth came to light: Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.

The Keeper of Dawn ($2.99/KLL Eligible), by J.B. Hickman [indie]

Book Description
Groomed for greatness, 15-year-old Jacob Hawthorne is sent to boarding school against his will. Jacob’s resentment toward his family reaches an all-time high when his father doesn’t bother to see him off for the 1980 school year. With a self-absorbed mother, an estranged father, and an older brother on the other side of the world, only the unlikely friendship with his grandfather can lure Jacob back home. But home feels like a distant memory from the shore of Raker Island, the isolated campus of one of the Northeast’s elite boarding schools.

As the surrogate bonds of a cloistered all-boys school fall into place, Jacob finds himself among other sons of privilege who suffer the same affliction—growing up in their fathers’ shadow. In fact, Jacob and his friends get dubbed “the Headliners” when their fathers make the headlines on the same day. Among them is Chris Forsythe, the rebellious son of a high-profile politician whose helicopter arrival sparks jealousy among the school’s upperclassmen.

Wellington Academy has been selected to host that fall’s senatorial debate, and Chris’ father is one of the candidates. Chris convinces Jacob—who is among the students selected to question the candidates on live television—to expose his father for embezzling money to finance his reelection campaign. Only Mr. O’Leary, Wellington’s inquisitive history teacher, stands in the way of Chris’ influence over Jacob. He alone can stop the inevitable head-on father-son collision that Chris is guiding Jacob toward. But when tragedy strikes, Jacob is forced to journey into the past to reclaim a well-guarded family secret.

UK Kindle Daily Deal 4/21

From Last to First: How I Became a Marathon Champion (£0.99 UK), by Charlie Spedding, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (no US edition).

Book Description
Charlie Spedding describes himself as 'not particularly talented' -- at least compared to the group of people he had chosen to find himself among. These were the athletes in the Olympic marathon. So how did he end up with a bronze medal? How did he win the London marathon? And why does he still hold the English record for the distance?

In this remarkable autobiography, he explains how -- how someone who was almost the bottom of the class when he first went to school, and even worse at sport, eventually turned himself into a world-class athlete, competing in top marathons all over the world, and genuinely going from last to first.

As well as the enthralling life story of one of our finest distance runners, this book is a wonderfully clear and inspiring piece of life coaching for anyone who wants to make the most of their talents. But more than this, as Spedding says at the start, 'I believe that on occasions you can create the circumstances in which you can perform at a higher level than your talent says you can.' Spedding's own story, and his chronicle of the big races he excelled in, proves it's true

For anyone aspiring to run a marathon, or indeed anyone who wants to set themselves a goal they think beyond their reach -- and achieve it -- this is an essential book.

Free Companion Book? Dick Francis's Gamble

The companion audiobook for Dick Francis's Gamble ($9.99 Kindle), by Felix Francis, is supposed to be free at Audible if you have first purchased the Kindle edition, at least, according to the Kindle edition page. The Audible page has a different price, tho, and I'm not sure which you'd end up paying; however, if you own the ebook and want the audiobook, it's worth giving it a shot (and contacting support if it tries to charge you, as they will often make good on the advertised price). If you do, you might want to make your own screenshot of the page to show support (include the date/time in your pic, if possible).

Book Description
One of the youngest winners of the Grand National, Nick “Foxy” Foxton suffered a near-fatal injury that cut short his career. Years later, he’s out for a day at the Grand National races when his colleague, Herb Kovack, is shot at point-blank range right in front of him. Like the police, Nick is baffled: Why would anyone kill such an apparently gentle soul?

Then Nick finds a threatening note in the dead man’s coat, and he begins to doubt how well he really knew his friend. And on discovering that Herb named him beneficiary in his will, Nick wonders why he’s been entrusted with the legacy. Is this a generous gift from a friend, or is it, in fact, a poisoned chalice?

Get the companion audiobook from Audible.

Bargin Book Roundup

Using Agate Surreys great looking free cookbook as my inspiration today, I've picked all food and drink related bargains for tonight's post. It's not all cookbooks, although I've picked out several of them (quite a few from the same publisher, Agate), though, as I considered the title and cover image, along with the subject matter, in deciding which ones made the cut.

I bought Nancie McDermott's Southern Pies: A Gracious Plenty of Pie Recipes, From Lemon Chess to Chocolate Pecan ($2.99) last year and it's on sale again, just in time to find a few recipes to try out for the holidays.

Book Description
Ask any pie lover—the words "southern" and "pie" go together like ripe fruit and flaky pastry. And behind all the mouthwatering, light-as-a-cloud meringue peaks and the sticky dark butterscotch fillings lies a rich and delicious history. In Southern Pies, some of the South's most famous bakers share recipes for 70 pies. Perfect for bakers of all skill levels, these pies are made with simple, easy-to-find, and gloriously few ingredients. Featuring such classics as Sweet Tea Pie and New Orleans Creole Coconut Pie, this tasty homage will fill everyone at the table with Southern hospitality.

The Latte Rebellion ($1.99), by Sarah Jamila Stevenson

Book Description
Hoping to raise money for a post-graduation trip to London, Asha Jamison and her best friend Carey decide to sell T-shirts promoting the Latte Rebellion, a club that raises awareness of mixed-race students.

But seemingly overnight, their "cause" goes viral and the T-shirts become a nationwide social movement. As new chapters spring up from coast to coast, Asha realizes that her simple marketing plan has taken on a life of its own—and it's starting to ruin hers. Asha's once-stellar grades begin to slip, threatening her Ivy League dreams, while her friendship with Carey hangs by a thread. And when the peaceful underground movement spins out of control, Asha's school launches a disciplinary hearing. Facing expulsion, Asha must decide how much she's willing to risk for something she truly believes in.

Age Level: 12 and up

The Quiche of Death ($2.99) is the first title M C Beaton's long running and extremely popular Agatha Raisin mystery series.

Book Description
Putting all her eggs in one basket, Agatha Raisin gives up her successful PR firm, sells her London flat, and samples a taste of early retirement in the quiet village of Carsely. Bored, lonely and used to getting her way, she enters a local baking contest: Surely a blue ribbon for the best quiche will make her the toast of the town. But her recipe for social advancement sours when Judge Cummings-Browne not only snubs her entry—but falls over dead! After her quiche’s secret ingredient turns out to be poison, she must reveal the unsavory truth…

Agatha has never baked a thing in her life! In fact, she bought her entry ready-made from an upper crust London quicherie. Grating on the nerves of several Carsely residents, she is soon receiving sinister notes. Has her cheating and meddling landed her in hot water, or are the threats related to the suspicious death? It may mean the difference between egg on her face and a coroner’s tag on her toe…

Rule of Three ($1.99), the second title in Megan McDonald's The Sisters Club series, looks like a good choice for the younger set. And, although there is no food on the cover, The Sisters Club, the first in the series, is also on sale for $1.99.

Book Description
Alex has always been the Actor with-a-capital-A in the Reel family, and middle-sister Stevie has always been content behind the scenes. But when the school play turns out to be a musical, Stevie decides that she’s tired of being the Sensible One. Maybe, for once, she’d like to be in the spotlight! Soon the dueling divas—with little sister Joey egging them on—are in a fierce competition to see who has what it takes to play the Princess. Has Stevie broken the rules by going for what she wants, or will it be Alex who hands down the biggest betrayal of all?

Grade Level: 3 and up

The Greenhouse ($1.99), by Audur Ava Olafsdottir and Brian FitzGibbon (Translator).

Book Description
Young Lobbi was preparing to leave his childhood home, his autistic brother, his octogenarian father, and the familiar landscape of mossy lava fields for an unknown future. Soon before his departure, he received an awful phone call: his mother was in a car accident. She used her dying words to offer calm advice to her son, urging him to continue their shared work in the greenhouse tending to the rare Rosa candida. Prior to his mother’s death, in that very same greenhouse, Lobbi made love to Anna, a friend of a friend, and just as he readies his departure he learns that in their brief night together they conceived a child. He is still reeling from this chain of events when he arrives at his new job, reinstating the rare eight-petaled rose in the majestic forgotten garden of an ancient European monastery. In focusing his energy cultivating the rarest rose, he also learns to cultivate love, with the help of a film buff monk and his newborn daughter, Flora Sol.

Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs: A True Story of Bad Breaks and Small Miracles ($2.99), by Heather Lende

Book Description
The Alaskan landscape—so vast, dramatic, and unbelievable—may be the reason the people in Haines, Alaska (population 2,400), so often discuss the meaning of life. Heather Lende thinks it helps make life mean more. Since her bestselling first book, If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name, a near-fatal bicycle accident has given Lende a few more reasons to consider matters both spiritual and temporal. Her idea of spirituality is rooted in community, and here she explores faith and forgiveness, loss and devotion—as well as raising totem poles, canning salmon, and other distinctly Alaskan adventures. Lende’s irrepressible spirit, her wry humor, and her commitment to living a life on the edge of the world resonate on every page. Like her own mother’s last wish—take good care of the garden and dogs—Lende’s writing, so honest and unadorned, deepens our understanding of what links all humanity.

Of Blood and Honey ($1.99), by Stina Leicht

Book Description
Liam never knew who his father was. The town of Derry had always assumed that he was the bastard of a protestant — his mother never spoke of him, and Liam assumed he was dead. But when the war between the fallen and the fey began to heat up, Liam and his family are pulled into a conflict that they didn’t know existed. A centuries old conflict between supernatural forces seems to mirror the political divisions in 1970’s era Ireland, and Liam is thrown headlong into both conflicts! Only the direct intervention of Liam’s real father, and a secret catholic order dedicated to fighting “The Fallen” can save Liam... from the mundane and supernatural forces around him, and from the darkness that lurks within him.

Honeybee: Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper ($2.99), by C. Marina Marchese

Book Description
In 1999, Marina Marchese fell in love with bees during a tour of a neighbor's honeybee hives. She quit her job, acquired her own bees, built her own hives, harvested honey, earned a certificate in apitherapy, studied wine tasting in order to transfer those skills to honey tasting, and eventually opened her own honey business. Today, Red Bee® Honey sells artisanal honey and honey-related products to shops and restaurants all over the country.

More than an inspiring story of one woman's transformative relationship with honeybees (some of nature's most fascinating creatures), Honeybee is also bursting with information about all aspects of bees, beekeeping, and honey—including life inside the hive; the role of the queen, workers, and drones; pollination and its importance to sustaining all life; the culinary pleasures of honey; hiving and keeping honeybees; the ancient practice of apitherapy, or healing with honey, pollen, and bee venom; and much more.

Recipes for food and personal care products appear throughout. Also included is an excellent, one-of-a-kind appendix that lists 75 different honey varietals, with information on provenance, tasting notes, and food-and-wine pairings.

The Healing Powers of Honey ($3.99), by Cal Orey

Book Description
Did you know?...

• Known as Mother Nature's "nectar of the gods," honey was praised for its healing powers as far back as 5,000 years ago by Egyptians.
• Eating honey can help lower the risk of heart disease, cancer , diabetes--even help reduce body fat and unwanted weight!--and increase longevity.
• Pure, raw, unprocessed honey is a healthier sweetener than table sugar and high fructose corn syrup. It's chock-full of antioxidants, minerals, and vitamins--and only has 21 calories per teaspoon.
• Super "bee foods" (including nutrient-rich bee pollen, propolis, and royal jelly) are used and touted for their healing powers by beekeepers and medical experts in the present-day.
• Honey can relieve a variety of ailments, including allergies, coughs, fatigue, pain, and stress, as well as boost libido.
• The honey bee pollinates about one-third of the food we consume (including nutritious fruits and nuts).

Drawing on the latest honey buzz and interviews with medical doctors, beekeepers, and researchers, this charming and enlightening book (sweetened with stories about honey bees and humans) reveals 30 healing honey varieties paired with cinnamon and teas, tells you how to incorporate honey into Mediterranean-style, heart-healthy recipes like Honey Custard French Toast, Honey-Glazed Game Hen, and Filo Pear and Honey Tarts, and provides more than 50 home cures that combat digestive woes to skin woes. You'll also enjoy Cleopatra's milk-and-honey beauty treatments and eco-friendly beeswax household uses--all made with the amazing honey bee's gifts!

Put 'em Up!: A Comprehensive Home Preserving Guide for the Creative Cook, from Drying and Freezing to Canning and Pickling ($2.99), by Sherri Brooks Vinton

Book Description
PRESERVING IS BACK, AND IT’S BETTER THAN EVER. Flavors are brighter, batch sizes are more flexible, and modern methods make the process safer and easier. Eating locally is on everybody's mind, and nothing is more local than Heirloom Salsa made from vine-fresh tomatoes or a quick batch of Ice-Box Berry Jam saved from the seasons last berries. Even beginners who never made peach jam or dill pickles in their grandmothers kitchens are eager to pick up preserving skills as a way to save money, extend the local harvest, and control the quality of preserved ingredients.

The step-by-step instructions in Put ‘em Up will have the most timid beginners filling their pantries and freezers with the preserved goodness of summer in no time. An extensive Techniques section includes complete how-to for every kind of preserving: refrigerating and freezing, air- and oven-drying, cold- and hot-pack canning, and pickling. And with recipe yields as small as a few pints or as large as several gallons, readers can easily choose recipes that work for the amount of produce and time at hand.

Real food advocate Sherri Brooks Vinton offers recipes with exciting flavor combinations to please contemporary palates and put preserved fruits and vegetables on dinner-party menus everywhere. Pickled Asparagus and Wasabi Beans are delicious additions to holiday relish trays; Sweet Pepper Marmalade perks up cool-weather roasts; and Berry Bourbon is an unexpected base for a warming cocktail.

The best versions of tried-and-true favorites are all here too. Bushels of fresh-picked apples are easily turned into applesauce, dried fruit rings, jelly, butter, or even brandy. Falling-off-the-vine tomatoes can be frozen whole, oven dried, canned, or made into a tangy marinara. Options for pickling cucumbers range from Bread and Butter Chips and Dill Spears to Asian Ice-Box Pickles. Something delicious for every pantry!

How to Stay Alive in the Woods: A Complete Guide to Food, Shelter and Self-Preservation Anywhere ($2.99), by Bradford Angier

Book Description
HOW TO STAY ALIVE IN THE WOODS is a practical, readable-and potentially indispensable-manual for anyone venturing into the great outdoors.

Broken down into four essential sections, Sustenance, Warmth, Orientation and Safety, this enlightening guide reveals how to catch game without a gun, what plants to eat (full-color illustrations of these make identification simple), how to build a warm shelter, make clothing, protect yourself and signal for help. Detailed illustrations and expanded instructions, newly commissioned for this deluxe edition, offer crucial information at a glance, making How to Stay Alive in the Woods truly a lifesaver.

Dave Miller's Homebrewing Guide: Everything You Need to Know to Make Great-Tasting Beer ($2.99), by Dave Miller

Book Description
In this comprehensive guide to homebrewing, Miller clearly explains the best techniques for every step of the entire brewing process. Clear enough for the novice but thorough enough to earn a home in the libraries of brewmasters, this is the essential volume on brewing great-tasting beer at home.

Thirst ($2.99), by Andrei Gelasimov and Marian Schwartz (Translator)

Book Description
Masterfully translated from the original Russian by award-winning translator Marian Schwartz, Thirst tells the story of 20-year-old Chechen War veteran Kostya. Maimed beyond recognition by a tank explosion, he spends weeks on end locked inside his apartment, his sole companions the vodka bottles spilling from the refrigerator. But soon Kostya’s comfortable if dysfunctional cocoon is torn open when he receives a visit from his army buddies who are mobilized to locate a missing comrade. Through this search for his missing friend, Kostya is able to find himself.

How's Your Drink?: Cocktails, Culture, and the Art of Drinking Well ($0.99), by Eric Felten

Book Description
Based on the popular feature in the Saturday Wall Street Journal, How's Your Drink illuminates the culture of the cocktail. John F. Kennedy played nuclear brinksmanship with a gin and tonic in his hand. Teddy Roosevelt took the witness stand to testify that six mint juleps over the course of his presidency did not make him a drunk. Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Chandler both did their part to promote the gimlet. Eric Felten tells all of these stories and many more, and also offers exhaustively researched cocktail recipes.

Taste: A Life in Wine ($4.24), by Anthony Terlato

Book Description
Anthony Terlato's story is not simply the usual CEO narrative of achieving business success, nor i it the typical winemaker's tale of pursuing perfection in a glass. Straddling both of those stories, Terlato uses broad strokes to show how one individual had an enormous impact on Americans' wine-drinking habits. Wine journalist Linda Murphy described Terlato in the San Francisco Chronicle as "one of the most accomplished wine personalities on the planet," and readers of this account of a 50-year love affair with wine see this affable, intelligent man at his finest.

Wahoo Rhapsody ($1.99), an Atticus Fish novel by Shaun Morey

Book Description
Take one sea-loving captain, a drug-smuggling first mate, and a novice deckhand with a secret, and you have the motley crew of the Wahoo Rhapsody, a ramshackle fishing charter plying the Pacific’s waters off the coast of Cabo San Lucas. Captain Winston Weber makes an honest, if lean, living running fishing charters between Mexico and California, with no inkling of the fact that his first mate, Weevil Ott, is smuggling marijuana inside the yellowfin tuna stacked in the boat’s hold. But when Weevil decides to skim a small fortune for himself, goons under orders from the mysterious drug lord known only as “La Cucaracha” descend upon the Wahoo Rhapsody. What ensues is a madcap romp that will catapult readers from Cabo San Lucas to Tucson and San Diego, as Winston, Weevil, and an expat American lawyer by the name of Atticus Fish try to outrun La Cucaracha’s bloody reach. Fans of Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard will relish this rollicking satirical adventure from award-winning writer Shaun Morey.

Skinny Seafood: Over 100 delectable low-fat recipes for preparing nature's underwater bounty ($0.99), by Barbara Grunes

Book Description
Seafood eating is healthy eating. But preparing exciting and delicious fish and shellfish can be a challenge. Skinny Seafood meets the challenge with 100 new recipes that are as inventive as they are easy to make. Banish bland, ho-hum fish forever, and start enjoying the bounty of the sea for great taste as well as good health.

Skinny Seafood's recipes make it easy to prepare seafood. Most dishes require little cooking time, and fish is surprisingly economical when purchased fresh. All of the recipes employ simple preparation techniques to control fat, calories, and cholesterol. Likewise, the scores of creative sauces and accompaniments rely on herbs, spices, an fresh natural ingredients for flavor rather than fat-laden oils and butter.

Fish was never like this: Trout with Mango and Blueberry Sauce, Salsa Red Snapper, Sole and Shrimp with Tequila and more

Skinny Grilling: Over 100 inventive low-fat recipes for meats, fish, poultry, vegetables & desserts ($0.99), by Barbara Grunes

Book Description
The barbecue grill is an American icon. In suburbia it's a backyard fixture. In cities it appears on tiny balconies. At picnics and beach parties it's indispensable. Yet the food we usually grill has a fatty sameness that does justice neither to the cook's skill or the diners' good health.

Barbara Grunes, author of over 50 cookbooks and maven of grill cookery, puts an end to routine, fat-laden barbecues once and for all with Skinny Grilling's 100 exciting new recipes. This unique collection establishes grill cooking as a versatile culinary technique in its own right, no longer limited to chicken, ribs, and hamburgers.

Now home cooks can grill--easily and without fuss--delicious roasts, succulent seafood, smoked turkeys, bubbling pizzas, and dozens more main dishes. But that's just the beginning. Over the same coals, readers can quickly turn out juicy vegetables, creative salads, unforgettable smoked meats, oriental stir-fries in the wok--even fabulous desserts! Also included is a wonderful red-white-and-blue 5-course 4th of July feast.

Families and friends love the festivity and fun of cookouts, and Skinny Grilling will provide an inventive recipe collection to vastly extend any cook's grilling repertory. Even better, the food prepared from this book will be low in fat, high in flavor, and anything but routine.

Skinny Pizza: Over 100 healthy recipes for America's favorite food ($0.99), by Barbara Grunes

Book Description
Pizza is America's national fun food. And now--thanks to Barbara Grunes' innovative recipes--pizza qualifies as America's national good-health food, too. These 100-plus recipes trim away the excess fat, cholesterol, and calories that usually come with pizza, so families can enjoy all the great tastes without sacrificing good nutrition.

Starting with easy-to-make (and store) recipes for basic crusts and sauces, Skinny Pizzas shows you how easy it is to top pizzas with fresh, low-fat, high-fiber vegetables, dairy products, fruits, poultry, meat, and fish--everything from zucchini and pears to smoked salmon. From hearty one-dish meals to pizza snacks, appetizers, party dishes, and even desserts--all slimmed down for today's healthful lifestyle--home cooks can feel good about serving pizza any time and for any occasion.

• Tomato-based pizzas: Shrimp, mushroom, chicken, spinach, tuna, peppers, artichoke, eggplant, and more.
• Non-tomato-based pizzas: Teriyaki, salmon, bok choy, goat's cheese, clam, turkey, stir-fry, zucchini, and more.
• Pizza on the grill: Fajita, vegetarian, Thai-flavored, salsa, olive, ratatouille, mango, barbecue, and more.
• Specialty pizzas: Creole, Szechwan, smoked turkey, scallop, focaccia, crab cake, nacho, English muffin, and more.
• Dessert pizzas: Apple, mint brownie, cheesecake, strawberry yogurt, rum-raisin, and more.

All recipes include diabetic exchanges and nutritional specifics on fat, cholesterol, sodium, calories, and percent of calories from fat. Recipes conform to the American Heart Association guidelines regarding the percent daily intake of calories from fat.

Speedy Suppers Cookbook: Simple meals for a family-on-the-go, all in about 30 minutes or less! ($2.99), by Gooseberry Patch

Book Description
Simple meals for busy families! Speedy Suppers cookbook features delicious dishes that are ready in 30 minutes or less like baked ziti supreme, quick-as-lightning enchiladas and easy, breezy caramel brownies. 224 pages.

Good Eating's Best of the Best: Great Recipes of the Past Decade from the Chicago Tribune Test Kitchen ($0.99), edited by Carol Mighton Haddix

Book Description
In this, it's first new cookbook in more than a decade, the Chicago Tribune offers 50 of the very best recipes from the pages of the paper’s weekly Good Eating section. The Tribune remains one of the few newspapers in this country with its own working test kitchen, which ensures that the recipes are accurate and reliable. Each year, staff members choose their favorites. Now, the best of those winning recipes are compiled in a book that reflects how we having been cooking--and eating--over the last decade.

The book features recipes from across the wide range of common kitchen offerings: starters, meat and poultry dishes, seafood, pasta, rice, side dishes, salads, baked goods, and desserts. In addition, a section on menu planning offers readers ideas for entertaining.

Good Eating's Seasonal Salads: Fresh and Creative Recipes for Spring, Summer, Winter, and Fall ($3.99 pre-order), by the Chicago Tribune Staff

Book Description
Good Eating’s Seasonal Salads is a collection of 90 delicious recipes from the Chicago Tribune’s Good Eating section that are perfect as exciting side dishes or full, healthy meals. Making use of fresh in-season ingredients, this eclectic assortment of salads features flavorful options for every month of the year. Salads range in style and substance, from practical and quick to creative and gourmet, light and simple to hearty and robust, and from classic stand-bys to unique innovations.

Each recipe provides a series of healthy eating tips and is grouped into categories based on its main ingredients, including greens, vegetables, potatoes, eggs, poultry, meat, seafood, rice, grains, beans, pasta, fruit, and dressings. Especially useful is the book’s broad selection of winter salads, including delicious whole-grain salads and tips on seasonal produce. Each section is introduced by an entertaining narrative passage informing readers on topics such as the rise in popularity of Romaine lettuce and kale or the history behind the Caesar and Cobb salads. Good Eating’s Seasonal Salads also offers the culinary creations of several experienced cooks who provide their own perspectives and voice to the recipes.

Salads are versatile and healthful options for snacks or meals, lunch or dinner, summer or winter, and they let home cooks save money by creatively using leftovers in refreshing ways. Good Eating’s Seasonal Salads is ideal for novice and expert home cooks alike who are looking to prepare healthy, inexpensive, and appetizing salads using the freshest year-round ingredients.

Grant Achatz: The Remarkable Rise of America's Most Celebrated Young Chef ($1.99), by the Chicago Tribune Staff

Book Description
Grant Achatz's career as a chef has been built around beating the odds—from his humble Midwestern beginnings and rise to stardom in Chicago; his iconoclastic vision of the American dining experience; and his life-threatening battle with cancer that temporarily stripped him of his ability to taste. In all these situations, Achatz defiantly and definitively surmounted innumerable obstacles to become—and remain—one of the world's most recognizable and respected chefs.

Grant Achatz: The Remarkable Rise of America's Most Celebrated Young Chef, a collection of articles taken from the Chicago Tribune, is an up-close examination of Achatz's personal history and international impact in the culinary world. Included are rare interviews on Achatz's humble beginnings as a young chef and modest lifestyle, stories from his stint as executive chef of Evanston, Illinois's four-star restaurant Trio, long-unseen restaurant reviews, as well as features on his innovative restaurants Aviary and Next, which play with Achatz's trademark concept of molecular gastronomy and the importance of presentation and memory in fine dining.

In the middle of all this success, Achatz was diagnosed with stage-four squamous cell carcinoma, a rare cancer afflicting the tongue that completely eliminated Achatz's sense of taste. Told he would die if he did not have his tongue surgically removed, Achatz tenaciously clung to the belief he would be able to regain the sense most vital to his extraordinary talent. While undergoing experimental treatment to regain his sense of taste, Achatz continued to manage Alinea and even improved it despite his professionally debilitating condition. Miraculously, Achatz made a full recovery and regained his ability to taste while going on to open one of the culinary world's most discussed and praised new restaurants: Next.

Grant Achatz tells the story of the man at the forefront of modern culinary trends and the world's top-rated restaurants, as seen through both his own eyes and the journalists who have been covering his fights against the odds from the beginning.

The Italian Slow Cooker ($2.99), by Michele Scicolone, is one that I bought last year.

Book Description
Finally a book that combines the fresh, exuberant flavors of great Italian food with the ease and comfort of a slow cooker. Michele Scicolone, a best-selling author and an authority on Italian cooking, shows how good ingredients and simple techniques can lift the usual “crockpot” fare into the dimension of fine food. Pasta with Meat and Mushroom Ragu, Osso Buco with Red Wine, Chicken with Peppers and Mushrooms: These are dishes that even the most discriminating cook can proudly serve to company, yet all are so carefree that anyone with just five or ten minutes of prep time can make them on a weekday and return to perfection.

Simmered in the slow cooker, soups, stews, beans, grains, pasta sauces, and fish are as healthy as they are delicious. Polenta and risotto, “stir-crazy” dishes that ordinarily need careful timing, are effortless. Meat loaves come out perfectly moist, tough cuts of meat turn succulent, and cheesecakes emerge flawless.

The Everything Soup, Stew, and Chili Cookbook ($1.99), by Belinda Hulin, is another one I bought last year.

Book Description
Creamy New England clam chowder. Hearty beef stew. Fresh vegetarian chili. Soups, stews, and chilies are comforting meals the whole family enjoys; and to top it off, they’re inexpensive to create! This cookbook includes information and cooking tips, as well as 300 mouthwatering recipes, including:

• Smoked Duck and Squash Soup
• Ginger Beef Soup with Dumplings
• Creamy Asparagus Soup
• Sirloin and Black Bean Chili
• Mixed Bean Vegetarian Chili
• Warm Apple-Cranberry Stew
• Blackberry Stew with Sweet Biscuits

Whether you are in the mood for a chilled fruit soup on a warm summer day or a comforting meat-and-potato stew on a cold winter night, this book has everything! No matter what the season or occasion, you will find a choice that hits the spot.

Eat, Sleep, Ride: How I Braved Bears, Badlands, and Big Breakfasts in My Quest to Cycle the Tour Divide ($9.99), by Paul Howard, isn't discounted, but looks to be a good read. I've downloaded a sample and will probably stick it on my wishlist, to keep an eye on and consider as a holiday gift.

Book Description
For Paul Howard, who has ridden the entire Tour de France route during the race itself—setting off at 4 am each day to avoid being caught by the pros—riding a small mountain-bike race should hold no fear. Still, this isn’t just any mountain-bike race. This is the Tour Divide.

Running from Banff in Canada to the Mexican border, the Tour Divide is more than 2,700 miles—500 miles longer than the Tour de France. Its route along the Continental Divide goes through the heart of the Rocky Mountains and involves more than 200,000 feet of ascent—the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest seven times.

The other problem is that Howard has never owned a mountain bike—and how will training on the South Downs in southern England prepare him for sleeping rough in the Rockies? Entertaining and engaging, Eat, Sleep, Ride will appeal to avid and aspiring cyclers, as well as fans of adventure/travel narrative with a humorous twist.

Two Free Audiobooks - Pinned and Locomotion

There are two new free audiobook from Sync today. First, I've linked in the info from the ebook or audiobook version of each title (Amazon has the best reviews), followed by the link to get your copies free, with directions to ensure you get the complete download.

The first free audiobook is Pinned ($4.99 Kindle; $17.95 Audible), by Alfred C. Martino, narrated by Mark Shanahan.

Book Description
In this gripping story, wrestling dominates the lives of two young men. Ivan Korske and Bobby Zane come from very different backgrounds--yet they both have the drive, determination, and commitment of a champion. And both are determined to have successful wrestling seasons despite having to grapple with their own demons.

But their personal problems won't matter when these two teens meet on the mat to compete for the title of New Jersey State Wrestling Champion. Both Ivan and Bobby have put in grueling hours of practice, endured intense hunger to cut weight, and sacrificed themselves for the sport they love--but only one of them is destined to win.

Grade Level: 7 and up

Locomotion ($7.99 Kindle; $11.95 Audible), by Jacqueline Woodson, narrated by Dion Graham, is the second selection for this week.

Book Description
When Lonnie was seven years old, his parents died in a fire. Now he's eleven, and he still misses them terribly. And he misses his little sister, Lili, who was put into a different foster home because not a lot of people want boys-not foster boys that ain't babies." But Lonnie hasn't given up. His foster mother, Miss Edna, is growing on him. She's already raised two sons and she seems to know what makes them tick. And his teacher, Ms. Marcus, is showing him ways to put his jumbled feelings on paper.

Told entirely through Lonnie's poetry, we see his heartbreak over his lost family, his thoughtful perspective on the world around him, and most of all his love for Lili and his determination to one day put at least half of their family back together. Jacqueline Woodson's poignant story of love, loss, and hope is lyrically written and enormously accessible."

Grade Level: P and up

Click HERE to get the free downloads (you'll need to enter your name and an email address. You'll end up clicking about three pages (for each book), before the audiobook actually downloads. Don't stop so long as you still see a button that talks about your Sync download (or until you see the Overdrive software open up; there is a link at Sync, if you don't already have Overdrive installed).

Once in Overdrive, you'll need to tell it where to save the files (just click OK to use the default location, since Overdrive will keep track of them for you), then again to actually start the download (by default, all parts of the book are downloaded; I would suggest not changing this in the last dialog box, just click on OK to get the download started). Make sure your audiobook is fully downloaded before the end of the week, as once the promo period is over, you won't be able to get them free.

You can't get any titles that have been missed, but once they are loaded into Overdrive (which you will need to install, if you are not already using it for library books), they are yours to keep (there is no expiration date). Two new titles each Thursday!

Bargain Book Roundup - BaseBall Edition

Anybody else out there think the weather is just perfect for baseball? It definitely looks like someone at HarperCollins thinks it is (although I've included a couple of titles from other publishers). If the moms in your life wouldn't appreciate one of these for Mother's Day, remember that you can delay a gifted book now and they would also make good Father's Day gifts (assuming of course, you don't buy them for yourself, now, and have Dad on the same account).

Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy ($1.99), by Jane Leavy

Book Description
In an era when too many heroes have been toppled from too many pedestals, Sandy Koufax stands apart and alone, a legend who declined his own celebrity. As a pitcher, he was sublime, the ace of baseball lore. As a human being, he aspired to be the one thing his talent and his fame wouldn't allow: a regular guy. A Brooklyn kid, he was the product of the sedate and modest fifties who came to define and dominate baseball in the sixties. In Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, former award-winning Washington Post sportswriter Jane Leavy delivers an uncommon baseball book, vividly re-creating the Koufax era, when presidents were believed and pitchers aspired to go the distance.

He was only a teenager when Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley proclaimed him "the Great Jewish Hope" of the franchise. But it wasn't until long after the team had abandoned Brooklyn that the man became the myth. Old-fashioned in his willingness to play when he was injured and in his acute sense of responsibility to his team, Koutax answered to an authority higher than manager Walter Alston. When he refused to pitch the opening game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, he inadvertently made himself a religious icon and an irrevocably public figure. A year later, he was gone -- done with baseball at age thirty. No other sports hero had retired so young, so well, or so completely.

Despite Sandy Koufax's best efforts to protect his privacy, his legend has grown larger ever since. Part biography, part cultural history, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy gets as close to that legend as he will allow. Through meticulous reporting and interviews with five hundred of his friends, teammates, and opponents, Leavy penetrates the mythology to discover a man more than worthy of myth.

The Boys of Summer ($1.99), by Roger Kahn

Book Description
This is a book about young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and then went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the team that broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is a book by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. This is a book about what happened to Jackie, Carl Erskine, Pee Wee Reese, and the others when their glory days were behind them. In short, it is a book about America, about fathers and sons, prejudice and courage, triumph and disaster, and told with warmth, humor, wit, candor, and love.

Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball ($1.99), by George F. Will

Book Description
In his classic tribute to America's pastime—now with a new introduction—political commentator, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and lifelong sports enthusiast George F. Will travels from the baseball field to the dugout to the locker room to get to the root of the game we all love. He breaks down the sport to its four basic components, managing, pitching, hitting, and fielding, and analyzes the way four of its notables, manager Tony La Russa, pitcher Orel Hershiser, outfielder Tony Gwynn, and shortstop Cal Ripken Jr., approach the game. One of the most acclaimed sports books ever written, Men at Work is a revelatory, and often surprising, study of professional baseball.

The Machine ($1.99), by Joe Posnanski

Book Description
There are memorable teams in baseball—and then there are utterly unforgettable teams like the 1975 Cincinnati Reds. From 1972 to 1976, the franchise known as the Big Red Machine dominated the National League, winning four division crowns, three league pennants, and two World Series titles. But their 1975 season has become the stuff of sports legend.

In The Machine, award-winning sports columnist Joe Posnanski captures all of the passion and tension, drama and glory of this extraordinary team considered to be one of the greatest ever to take the field. Helmed by Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson, the lineup for the '75 Reds is a Who's Who of baseball stars: Pete Rose, Ken Griffey, Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, George Foster, Cesar Geronimo, and Dave Concepcion. Like a well-oiled engine, the '75 Reds ended the regular season with 108 wins and finished a whopping 20 games ahead of their closest division competitor, the Los Angeles Dodgers.

But that remarkable year was not without controversy. Feuds, fights, insults, and run-ins with fans were as much a part of the season as hits, runs, steals, and strikeouts. Capturing this rollicking thrill-ride of a story, Posnanski brings to vivid life the excitement, hope, and high expectations that surrounded the players from the beginning of spring training through the long summer and into a nail-biting World Series, where, in the ninth inning of the seventh game, the Big Red Machine fulfilled its destiny, defeating the Boston Red Sox 4-3.

As enthralling and entertaining as the season and players it captures, The Machine is the story of a team unlike any other in the sport's glorious history.

The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood ($1.99), by Jane Leavy

Book Description
Jane Leavy, the acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, returns with a biography of an American original—number 7, Mickey Mantle. Drawing on more than five hundred interviews with friends and family, teammates, and opponents, she delivers the definitive account of Mantle's life, mining the mythology of The Mick for the true story of a luminous and illustrious talent with an achingly damaged soul.

Meticulously reported and elegantly written, The Last Boy is a baseball tapestry that weaves together episodes from the author's weekend with The Mick in Atlantic City, where she interviewed her hero in 1983, after he was banned from baseball, with reminiscences from friends and family of the boy from Commerce, Oklahoma, who would lead the Yankees to seven world championships, be voted the American League's Most Valuable Player three times, win the Triple Crown in 1956, and duel teammate Roger Maris for Babe Ruth's home run crown in the summer of 1961—the same boy who would never grow up.

As she did so memorably in her biography of Sandy Koufax, Jane Leavy transcends the hyperbole of hero worship to reveal the man behind the coast-to-coast smile, who grappled with a wrenching childhood, crippling injuries, and a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. In The Last Boy she chronicles her search to find out more about the person he was and, given what she discovers, to explain his mystifying hold on a generation of baseball fans, who were seduced by that lopsided, gap-toothed grin. It is an uncommon biography, with literary overtones: not only a portrait of an icon, but an investigation of memory itself. How long was the Tape Measure Home Run? Did Mantle swing the same way right-handed and left-handed? What really happened to his knee in the 1951 World Series? What happened to the red-haired, freckle-faced boy known back home as Mickey Charles?

"I believe in memory, not memorabilia," Leavy writes in her preface. But in The Last Boy, she discovers that what we remember of our heroes—and even what they remember of themselves—is only where the story begins.

The Soul of Baseball ($1.99), by Joe Posnanski

Book Description
When legendary Negro League player Buck O'Neil asked Joe Posnanski how he fell in love with baseball, the renowned sports columnist was inspired by the question. He decided to spend the 2005 baseball season touring the country with the ninety-four-year-old O'Neil in hopes of rediscovering the love that first drew them to the game.

The Soul of Baseball is as much the story of Buck O'Neil as it is the story of baseball. Driven by a relentless optimism and his two great passions—for America's pastime and for jazz, America's music—O'Neil played solely for love. In an era when greedy, steroid-enhanced athletes have come to characterize professional ball, Posnanski offers a salve for the damaged spirit: the uplifting life lessons of a truly extraordinary man who never missed an opportunity to enjoy and love life.

The Bad Guys Won ($1.99), by Jeff Pearlman

Book Description
Once upon a time, twenty-four grown men would play baseball together, eat together, carouse together, and brawl together. Alas, those hard-partying warriors have been replaced by GameBoy-obsessed, laptop-carrying, corporate soldiers who would rather punch a clock than a drinking buddy. But it wasn't always this way ...

In The Bad Guys Won, award-winning former Sports Illustrated baseball writer Jeff Pearlman returns to an innocent time when a city worshipped a man named Mookie and the Yankess were the second-best team in New York. So it was in 1986, when the New York Mets -- the last of baseball's live-like-rock-star teams -- won the World Series and captured the hearts (and other select body parts) of fans everywhere.

But their greatness on the field was nearly eclipsed by how bad they were off it. Led by the indomitable Keith Hernandez and the young dynamic duo of Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, along with the gallant Scum Bunch, the Amazin's won 108 regular-season games, while leaving a wide trail of wreckage in their wake -- hotel rooms, charter planes, a bar in Houston, and most famously Bill Buckner and the eternally cursed Boston Red Sox. With an unforgettable cast of characters -- Doc, Straw, the Kid, Nails, Mex, and manager Davey Johnson (as well as innumerable groupies) -- The Bad Guys Won immortalizes baseball's last great wild bunch of explores what could have been, what should have been, and thanks to a tragic dismantling of the club, what never was.

The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty (New Edition) ($1.99), by Buster Olney

Book Description
For six extraordinary years around the turn of the millennium, the Yankees were baseball's unstoppable force, with players such as Paul O'Neill, Derek Jeter, and Mariano Rivera. But for the players and the coaches, baseball Yankees-style was also an almost unbearable pressure cooker of anxiety, expectation, and infighting. With owner George Steinbrenner at the controls, the Yankees money machine spun out of control.

In this new edition of The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, Buster Olney tracks the Yankees through these exciting and tumultuous seasons, updating his insightful portrait with a new introduction that walks readers through Steinbrenner's departure from power, Joe Torre's departure from the team, the continued failure of the Yankees to succeed in the postseason, and the rise of Hank Steinbrenner. With an insider's familiarity with the game, Olney reveals what may have been an inevitable fall that last night of the Yankee dynasty, and its powerful aftermath.

Red Sox Rule ($1.99), by Michael Holley

Book Description
The story of the changing face of baseball and the inner workings of its finest organization

After a hundred "cursed" years, the Boston Red Sox rose gloriously to baseball domination. Under the leadership of manager Terry Francona, an extraordinary team of wildly disparate personalities—from the inscrutable Manny Ramirez to the affable David "Big Papi" Ortiz—pulled off two improbable post-season comebacks to make it to the World Series twice in three years . . . and ultimately emerged victorious. In Red Sox Rule, Michael Holley, bestselling author of Patriot Reign, provides a fascinating, insightful, and surprising inside look at how it all happened.

With the exclusive cooperation of Terry Francona and stories from the clubhouse and the conference room, Holley reveals the private sessions and the dugout and front-office strategies that have made the Red Sox a budding dynasty, overtaking their archrivals, the powerful New York Yankees, as the American League's elite team.

You Know Me Al ($0.99), by Ring Lardner, is a short title from inspirational publisher MacMay.

Book Description
Ring Larder was one of Ernest Hemingway's favorite writers. As a beginning writer Hemingway sometimes wrote under the pen name Ring Lardner, Jr., a nod to his literary hero.

You Know Me Al was written by Ring Lardner in 1916 and was his first successful book. The book is Written in the form of letters, written by "Jack Keefe," a bush league baseball player, to a friend back home. The letters made heavy use of the fictional author's idiosyncratic vernacular. Like most of Lardner's stories, You Know Me Al employed satire, in this case to show the stupidity and avarice of a certain type of athlete. "Ring Lardner thought of himself as primarily a sports columnist whose stuff wasn't destined to last, and he held to that absurd belief even after his first masterpiece, You Know Me Al, was published in 1916 and earned the awed appreciation of Virginia Woolf, among other very serious, unfunny people", wrote Andrew Ferguson, who named it, in a Wall Street Journal article, one of the top five pieces of American humor writing.

Bums No More: The Championship Season of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers ($2.99), by Stewart Wolpin

Book Description
In all of sports history, there has rarely been a bond like the one that linked the Brooklyn Dodgers with their fans. True believers to the core, Brooklynites cheered their team through every season, but never more passionately than the summer of 1955. And for a brief and shining moment on the sunny afternoon of October 4, 1955, Brooklyn stood still. Finally, the Dodgers, the beloved Bums, laid to rest a hard century of World Series futility and brought to Flatbush what Brooklynites never had before and would never have again: a championship. Bums No More! is a brilliant account of the Dodgers' World Series victory – the year they finally beat the Yankees. BUMS NO MORE! is more than just a baseball book. Author Stewart Wolpin has captured the camaraderie and fervor of an entire borough. From front porch steps to crowded bars, the wide-ranging emotions and atmosphere of the streets of Brooklyn during this marvelous season come to life. BUMS NO MORE! is a wonderful, nostalgic tribute to Brooklynites and baseball fans everywhere. – STEWART WOLPIN, a former sports writer with The Newark Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey, was a major contributor to The Ballplayers (William Morrow, 1990) and lives in New York City.

The Book of Baseball Literacy: 3rd Edition ($2.99), by David Martinez

Book Description
Lose yourself in all the marvelous memories and hallowed history of America’s national pastime with "The Book of Baseball Literacy: 3rd Edition." From the gloveless pioneers of the 1840s to the strife-ridden headlines of the 2000s, this comprehensive reference offers nearly 700 important baseball yarns, stats, and stories in a style as lively as the game itself. Incredibly thorough, never dull, the book answers these and countless other questions:

• Who was Ray Chapman, and why is he important?
• Did Abner Doubleday really invent baseball?
• What is sabermetrics?
• Who set off the Pine Tar Incident?
• Where was the first organized baseball game?
• Were the Cubs cursed by a billy goat?
• What are waivers and options?

Written by SABR member and former college baseball broadcaster David H. Martinez and even selected as required reading for a college course on baseball history, "The Book of Baseball Literacy: 3rd Edition" puts over a century and a half of legends and lore, right in your mitt. It will settle arguments and provoke them, answer questions and ask them. It’s a must for veteran baseball fans—and a perfect way to get up to speed on baseball history for newcomers.

Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the making of an Antihero ($2.99), by Jeff Pearlman

Book Description
No player in the history of baseball has left such an indelible mark on the game as San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds. In his twenty-year career, Bonds has amassed an unprecedented seven MVP awards, eight Gold Gloves, and more than seven hundred home runs, an impressive assortment of feats that has earned him consideration as one of the greatest players the game has ever seen. Equally deserved, however, is his reputation as an insufferable braggart, whose mythical home runs are rivaled only by his legendary ego. From his staggering ability and fabled pedigree (father Bobby played outfield for the Giants; cousin Reggie Jackson and godfather Willie Mays are both Hall of Famers) to his well-documented run-ins with teammates and the persistent allegations of steroid use, Bonds inspires a like amount of passion from both sides of the fence. For many, Bonds belongs beside Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron in baseball's holy trinity; for others, he embodies all that is wrong with the modern athlete: aloof; arrogant; alienated.

In Love Me, Hate Me, author Jeff Pearlman offers a searing and insightful look into one of the most divisive athletes of our time. Drawing on more than five hundred interviews -- with former and current teammates, opponents, managers, trainers, friends, and outspoken critics and unapologetic supporters alike -- Pearlman reveals, for the first time, a wonderfully nuanced portrait of a prodigiously talented and immensely flawed American icon whose controversial run at baseball immortality forever changed the way we look at our sports heroes.