In each of the 11 pieces collected here, Richard Russo considers the unexpected turns of the creative life. From his grandfather’s years cutting gloves to his own teenage dreams of rock stardom; from his first college teaching jobs to his dazzling reads of Dickens and Twain; from the roots of his famous novels to his journey accompanying a dear friend --- the writer Jennifer Finney Boylan --- as she pursued gender reassignment surgery, THE DESTINY THIEF powerfully reveals the inner workings of one of America’s most beloved authors.

Caddyshack is one of the most beloved comedies of all time, a classic snobs vs. slobs story of working class kids and the white collar buffoons who make them haul their golf bags in the hot summer sun. It has sex, drugs and one very memorable candy bar, but the movie we all know and love didn’t start out that way. In CADDYSHACK: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story, Chris Nashawaty goes behind the scenes of the iconic film, chronicling the rise of comedy’s greatest deranged minds as they form The National Lampoon, turn the entertainment industry on its head, and ultimately blow up both a golf course and popular culture as we know it.

Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent’s head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh-and-bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are “threeps,” robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden’s Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real and the crowds love it. Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field. Is it an accident or murder? FBI agents and Haden-related crime investigators Chris Shane and Leslie Vann are called in to uncover the truth --- and in doing so travel to the darker side of the fast-growing sport of Hilketa.

The bitter feud between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Chief Justice Earl Warren framed the tumultuous future of the modern civil rights movement. Eisenhower was a gradualist who wanted to coax white Americans in the South into eventually accepting integration, while Warren, author of the Supreme Court’s historic unanimous opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, demanded immediate action to dismantle the segregation of the public school system. In EISENHOWSER VS. WARREN, James F. Simon examines the years of strife between them that led Eisenhower to say that his biggest mistake as president was appointing that “dumb son of a bitch Earl Warren.”

In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly 100, passes away, leading to a farewell doubleheader in a single weekend. Among the guests is Big Angel's half brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life. Across two bittersweet days, the revelers mingle among the palm trees and cacti, celebrating the lives of Big Angel and his mother, and recounting the many inspiring tales that have passed into family lore.

When thousands of Somali refugees resettled in Lewiston, Maine, a struggling, overwhelmingly white town, longtime residents grew uneasy. Then the mayor wrote a letter asking Somalis to stop coming, which became a national story. While scandal threatened to subsume the town, its high school's soccer coach integrated Somali kids onto his team, and their passion began to heal old wounds. Taking readers behind the tumult of this controversial team --- and onto the pitch where the teammates vied to become state champions and achieved a vital sense of understanding --- ONE GOAL is a timely story about overcoming the prejudices that divide us.

Since its final episode aired in 2008, HBO’s acclaimed crime drama "The Wire" has only become more popular and influential. The issues it tackled, from the failures of the drug war and criminal justice system to systemic bias in law enforcement and other social institutions, have become more urgent and central to the national conversation. But while there has been a great deal of critical analysis of the show and its themes, until now there has never been a definitive, behind-the-scenes take on how it came to be made. With unparalleled access to all the key actors and writers involved in its creation, Jonathan Abrams tells the astonishing, compelling and complete account of "The Wire," from its inception and creation through its end and powerful legacy.

He was a college All-American who became the youngest player in the NFL and later a Super Bowl veteran. He was a star tight end on the league-dominant New England Patriots, who extended his contract for a record $40 million. Aaron Hernandez's every move as a professional athlete played out in the headlines, yet he led a secret life --- one that ended in a maximum security prison. What drove him to go so wrong, so fast? ALL-AMERICAN MURDER is the first book to investigate --- from the unique vantage point of thriller writer James Patterson --- Hernandez's first-degree murder conviction and the mystery of his own untimely and shocking death.

For almost 30 years, Antonin Scalia was arguably the most influential and controversial Justice on the United States Supreme Court. Based on his reputation for using scathing language to criticize liberal court decisions, many people presumed Scalia to be gruff and irascible. But to those who knew him as “Nino,” he was characterized by his warmth, charm, devotion, fierce intelligence and loyalty. Bryan Garner’s friendship with Justice Scalia was instigated by celebrated writer David Foster Wallace and strengthened over their shared love of language. In NINO AND ME, Garner gives a firsthand insight into the mind, habits and faith of one of the most famous and misunderstood judges in the world.

During the course of a career spanning half a century, Edward Garnett --- editor, critic and reader for hire --- would become one of the most influential men in 20th-century English literature. Known for his incisive criticism and unwavering conviction in matters of taste, Garnett was responsible for identifying and nurturing the talents of a generation of the greatest writers in the English language, from Joseph Conrad to John Galsworthy, Henry Green to Edward Thomas, T. E. Lawrence to D. H. Lawrence. In AN UNCOMMON READER, Helen Smith brings to life Garnett’s intimate and at times stormy relationships with those writers.