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Editorial Content for Skipper: Why Baseball Managers Matter and Always Will

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Ron Kaplan (www.RonKaplansBaseballBookshelf.com)

It used to be that managing in baseball was like most other professions. You started at the bottom (in the minors) and worked your way up. You might go from one team to another --- Billy Martin and Leo Durocher immediately come to mind --- but once you reached the top, you pretty much stayed there. They were intimidating presences with a “my way or the highway” credo. They weren’t concerned about players’ feelings or placating an ever increasingly hostile media. Read More

Teaser

SKIPPER takes on an ambitious Moneyball-esque premise: a deep dive into the ongoing struggle for control that often takes place behind the scenes between Major League Baseball managers and the ownership groups, and now, their data analysts. In a culture still attempting to come to terms with the Digital Age, there’s a bigger story behind the evolution of authority of managing inside the major leagues. Packed with baseball history, interviews with dozens of MLB's current stars and veterans, and an exclusive, inside look at the day-to-day life of LA Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, SKIPPER is a fascinating look into the highs, the lows and the inner workings of the changing world of professional baseball.

Promo

SKIPPER takes on an ambitious Moneyball-esque premise: a deep dive into the ongoing struggle for control that often takes place behind the scenes between Major League Baseball managers and the ownership groups, and now, their data analysts. In a culture still attempting to come to terms with the Digital Age, there’s a bigger story behind the evolution of authority of managing inside the major leagues. Packed with baseball history, interviews with dozens of MLB's current stars and veterans, and an exclusive, inside look at the day-to-day life of LA Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, SKIPPER is a fascinating look into the highs, the lows and the inner workings of the changing world of professional baseball.

About the Book

From the award-winning baseball writer and coauthor of NINETY PERCENT MENTAL, an unprecedented look at the job of Major League Baseball managers --- showing how they shape the game and how the ever-changing game shapes them.

SKIPPER takes on an ambitious Moneyball-esque premise: a deep dive into the ongoing struggle for control that often takes place behind the scenes between Major League Baseball managers and the ownership groups, and now, their data analysts. In a culture still attempting to come to terms with the Digital Age, there’s a bigger story behind the evolution of authority of managing inside the major leagues.

Packed with baseball history, interviews with dozens of MLB's current stars and veterans, and an exclusive, inside look at the day-to-day life of LA Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, SKIPPER is a fascinating look into the highs, the lows and the inner workings of the changing world of professional baseball.

Audiobook available, read by Bob Souer

Editorial Content for Making a Killing: A DI Fawley Thriller

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Ray Palen

Cara Hunter’s DI Fawley series has always been top-notch, but MAKING A KILLING might be her best book yet. Read More

Teaser

When Nick Vincent, the producer of the true-crime show “Infamous,” hears about an explosive new angle on a high-profile case --- the 2016 murder of an eight-year-old girl in Oxford --- he leaps at the chance to send a researcher to verify the claims. Two months later, a dog walker discovers a woman’s body, bound and buried in a shallow grave in the woods. Forensic evidence links the corpse to the disappearance of that same child. DCI Adam Fawley, the original investigating officer, is called in to run the enquiry. He arrested the child’s mother for murder, which he now knows she didn’t commit. The investigation raises more questions than answers. What connects the two crimes? Where has the dead girl been all these years? How did she manage to disappear?

Promo

When Nick Vincent, the producer of the true-crime show “Infamous,” hears about an explosive new angle on a high-profile case --- the 2016 murder of an eight-year-old girl in Oxford --- he leaps at the chance to send a researcher to verify the claims. Two months later, a dog walker discovers a woman’s body, bound and buried in a shallow grave in the woods. Forensic evidence links the corpse to the disappearance of that same child. DCI Adam Fawley, the original investigating officer, is called in to run the enquiry. He arrested the child’s mother for murder, which he now knows she didn’t commit. The investigation raises more questions than answers. What connects the two crimes? Where has the dead girl been all these years? How did she manage to disappear?

About the Book

From the New York Times bestselling author of the TikTok sensation MURDER IN THE FAMILY and the popular DI Adam Fawley series comes a brand-new gripping thriller in which a true-crime TV show turns up the heat on a controversial case from Fawley’s past.

When Nick Vincent, the producer of the true-crime show “Infamous,” hears about an explosive new angle on a high-profile case --- the 2016 murder of an eight-year-old girl in Oxford --- he leaps at the chance to send a researcher to verify the claims.

Two months later, a dog walker discovers a woman’s body, bound and buried in a shallow grave in the woods. Forensic evidence links the corpse to the disappearance of that same child.

DCI Adam Fawley, the original investigating officer, is called in to run the enquiry. And he remembers the case well. He arrested the child’s mother for murder. A murder he now knows she didn’t commit.

The investigation raises more questions than answers. What connects the two crimes? Where has the dead girl been all these years? How did she manage to disappear? For Adam Fawley, this is personal.

Audiobook available; read by Emma Cunniffe, Lee Ingleby, David Blair and Alexandra Boulton

Editorial Content for Awake in the Floating City

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Jana Siciliano

Susanna Kwan’s debut novel is set in her hometown of San Francisco, but it is not the beautiful city on the bay that it is today. Instead, AWAKE IN THE FLOATING CITY leans in to climate catastrophe, the kind that the denizens of the Bay City know all too well --- the whispers of water coming to overtake their part of the paradise that is Northern California. Read More

Teaser

Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city, and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge, and Bo has been alone ever since. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape --- but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay. Mia can be prickly, but they forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who has brought her back to it.

Promo

Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city, and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge, and Bo has been alone ever since. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape --- but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay. Mia can be prickly, but they forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who has brought her back to it.

About the Book

An utterly transporting debut novel about the unexpected relationship between an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares for --- two of the last people living in a flooded San Francisco of the future, the home neither is ready to leave.

Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city, and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge, and ever since Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape --- but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay.

Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought she’d abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bo’s own, she’s struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who’s brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place soon to be lost forever.

Audiobook available, read by Catherine Ho

Editorial Content for Disappoint Me

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Norah Piehl

Nicola Dinan's well-received debut, BELLIES, traced the evolution of a romantic relationship in which one of the characters comes to acknowledge her gender identity and begin the process of transitioning into life as a woman. Her second novel, DISAPPOINT ME, also features a protagonist who is a trans woman. But in this case, Max had completed the transition process years earlier. The characters here reckon with queerness and traditional relationships and if the two can ever coexist. Read More

Teaser

Thirty years old with a lifetime of dysphoria and irritating exes rattling around in her head, Max is plagued by a deep dissatisfaction. Shouldn't these be the best years of her life? Why doesn't it feel that way? After taking a spill down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party, she decides to make some changes. First: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity. Max thinks she’s found the answer in Vincent. While his corporate colleagues, trad friends and Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman, he cares for Max in a way she’d always dismissed as a foolish fantasy. But he is also carrying baggage of his own. When the fallout of a decades-old entanglement resurfaces, Max must decide what forgiveness really means.

Promo

Thirty years old with a lifetime of dysphoria and irritating exes rattling around in her head, Max is plagued by a deep dissatisfaction. Shouldn't these be the best years of her life? Why doesn't it feel that way? After taking a spill down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party, she decides to make some changes. First: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity. Max thinks she’s found the answer in Vincent. While his corporate colleagues, trad friends and Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman, he cares for Max in a way she’d always dismissed as a foolish fantasy. But he is also carrying baggage of his own. When the fallout of a decades-old entanglement resurfaces, Max must decide what forgiveness really means.

About the Book

An electrifying story of love, betrayal, and the complicated allure of bougie domesticity.

You can fall in love with an outline, you can even make a home with one, but there will come a time where you can’t deny the bones their flesh. A person is no fewer than two things.

Thirty years old with a lifetime of dysphoria and irritating exes rattling around in her head, Max is plagued by a deep dissatisfaction. Shouldn't these be the best years of her life? Why doesn't it feel that way? After taking a spill down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party, she decides to make some changes. First: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity.

Max thinks she’s found the answer in Vincent. While his corporate colleagues, trad friends and Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman, he cares for Max in a way she’d always dismissed as a foolish fantasy. But he is also carrying baggage of his own. When the fallout of a decades-old entanglement resurfaces, Max must decide what forgiveness really means. Can we be more than our worst mistakes? Is it possible to make peace with the past?

Funny, sharp and poignant, DISAPPOINT ME is a sweeping exploration of love, loss, trans panic, race, millennial angst, and the relationships --- familial and romantic --- that make us who we are.

Audiobook available, read by Martin Sarreal and Mei Mei MacLeod

Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray

May 2025

I confess that I knew little about the Harlem Renaissance before reading HARLEM RHAPSODY by Victoria Christopher Murray. I listened to the audiobook, which is narrated by Robin Miles. Each time I tuned into it, I found myself ensconced in the time period.

Victoria includes wonderful details not just about the writing that happened at The Crisis, the NAACP’s literary magazine, but also about the music, fashion and social scene that filled the times. The novel is set in 1920s Harlem, during the days of Prohibition, as well as enlightenment in the Black community. When I talked to Victoria about the book, she was quick to note that these strides for Black people had happened just 50 years after the end of slavery.

May 30, 2025

May in the tri-state area has been such a washout when it comes to the weather. I am hoping June gets the memo that it is supposed to be sunny and warm! Yes, I did head to the garden center again last weekend (flowers and plants are a bit of an addiction for me), and Karyn came and planted for us yesterday. The peonies still are popping, but the rain also means that they are dropping petals on the ground. Drat. We have a brilliant yellow peony flower this year that looks stunning for a while when cut, but then, as if on command, all of the petals drop in quick sequence.

Fiona Davis Event Signup

May 28, 2025

This Bookreporter.com Special Newsletter spotlights a book that we think is a great summer reading selection. Read more about it, and enter our Summer Reading Contest by Thursday, May 29th at noon ET for a chance to win one of five copies of THE GUEST COTTAGE: A Firefly Summer Novel by Lori Foster, which is now available. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!

May 27, 2025

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of May 26th and June 2nd that we think will be of interest to Bookreporter.com readers, along with Bonus News, where we call out a contest, feature or review that we want to let you know about so you have it on your radar.

This week, we are calling attention to our Nonfiction Author Spotlight of Brenda Coffee’s newly released book, MAYA BLUE: A Memoir of Survival, along with our review. This searingly honest and unforgettable memoir challenges women to rethink everything they know about survival, resilience and finding their voice.

May 27, 2025

This Bookreporter.com Special Newsletter spotlights a book that we think is a great summer reading selection. Read more about it, and enter our Summer Reading Contest by Wednesday, May 28th at noon ET for a chance to win one of five copies of BEACH HOUSE RULES by Kristy Woodson Harvey, which is now available. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!