Adult

Former mean girl Dixie Davis is back in town and it’s payback time. Literally. Dixie is flat broke and her best --- make that only --- friend, Landon, is throwing her a lifeline from the Great Beyond. Dixie stands to inherit his business…if she meets a few conditions.

If ever there was a figure who changed the game of baseball, it was Walter O'Malley. Criticized in New York and beloved in Los Angeles, O'Malley was one of the most controversial owners in the history of American sports, altering the course of history when he uprooted the Dodgers and transplanted them to Los Angeles. While many critics attacked him, O'Malley looked to the future, declining to defend his stance. As a result, fans across the nation have never been able to stop arguing about him and his strategy --- until now. FOREVER BLUE is a uniquely intimate portrait of a man who changed America's pastime forever, a fascinating story fundamental to the history of sports, business, and the American West.

AS THEY SEE 'EM is an insider’s look at the largely unknown world of professional umpires, the small group of men (and the very occasional woman) who make sure America’s favorite pastime is conducted in a manner that is clean, crisp, and true. Bruce Weber, a New York Times reporter, not only interviewed dozens of professional umpires but entered their world, trained to become an umpire, then spent a season working games from Little League to big league spring training. AS THEY SEE 'EM is Weber’s entertaining account of this experience as well as a lively exploration of what amounts to an eccentric secret society, with its own customs, its own rituals, its own colorful vocabulary.

Yogi Berra is one of the most popular former athletes in American history, and the most quoted American since Abraham Lincoln. Part comedian, part feisty competitor, Berra is also the winningest player (14pennants, 10 World Series, three MVPs) in baseball history. In this revelatory biography, Allen Barra presents Yogi's remarkable life as never seen before, from his childhood in "Dago Hill," the Italian-American neighborhood in St. Louis, to his leading role on the 1949-53 Yankees, the only team to win five consecutive World Series, to the travails of the '64 pennant race, through his epic battles and final peace with George Steinbrenner.

AMERICAN ICON: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America’s Pastime is about much more than the downfall of a superstar. While the fascinating portrait of Clemens is certainly at the center of the action, the book takes us outside the white lines and inside the lives and dealings of sports executives, trainers, congressmen, lawyers, drug dealers, groupies, a porn star, and even a murderer --- all of whom have ties to this saga. Four superb investigative journalists have spent years uncovering the truth, and at the heart of their investigation is a behind-the-scenes portrait of the maneuvering and strategies in the legal war between Clemens and his accuser, McNamee.

Former baseball slugger Darryl Strawberry, whose achievements on the field were often overshadowed by his struggles off the field, recounts the highs, the lows, and the lessons of hope and survival he learned along the way.

To many New Yorkers who came of age in the 1980s as Mets fans, Keith Hernandez is the Mets. Two decades after his last game, he is still with them, literally. He's spent most of the last decade in the broadcast booth at Shea Stadium watching the rise and fall of the club and he recalls Shea Stadium both fondly and matter-of-factly in its last year of existence, lamenting the loss of the stadiums he knew, replaced with flashier bandboxes that favor home runs and negate strategy. He looks at the 2008 season and how much of the optimism went out the window with the team's stumble out of the gate, speaking frankly on the taint of steroids in the Mitchell Report and how the game has been compromised, as well as the firing of Willie Randolph.

Ron Darling has been beloved by Mets fans since he helped his team win the 1986 World Series. Today he is considered one of the most articulate and insightful broadcasters in baseball, bringing the game to life in ways that few can match. Now he gives us an engaging, sophisticated, practical, and philosophical exploration of the art, strategy, and psychology of pitching.

In October of 1912, seven years before gambling nearly destroyed the sport, the world of baseball got lucky. It would get two teams-the Boston Red Sox and the New York Giants, winners of a combined 208 games during the regular season --- who may well have been the two finest ball clubs ever assembled to that point. Most importantly, during the course of eight games spanning nine days in that marvelous baseball autumn, they would elevate the World Series from a regional October novelty to a national obsession. The games would fight for space on the front pages of the nation's newspapers, battling both an assassin's bullet and the most sensational trial of the young century, with the Series often carrying the day and earning the “wood.”