Harness the sun

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Dallas Hudgens

Somewhere between incarceration and sainthood stands Joe Rice, a man who relishes peace, painkillers, and his Friday-night baseball league. When his shady business partner Gene dies rounding the bases, Joe knows this isn't going to be an ordinary season. Soon enough, a suburban ex-mobster, his entrepreneurial son, and a gun-toting minister have Tasered, maced and harassed Joe over the location of a three-million-dollar Babe Ruth baseball bat he doesn't know anything about. Joe just wants to save his car-detailing/ticker brokerage business from Gene's mountain of debt, crime and craziness. (Winning a game of Madden NFGL against his ex-girlfriend's twelve-year-old son would also be a relief.) But first, he must confront the ghosts of his past - namely, his murdered uncle and his mentally unstable mother. He must also deal with the present, navigating the space between the two women he cares about. And finally, he must face the future, every man's least favorite obstacle. Dallas Hudgens, the acclaimed author of Drive Like Hell, blends Guatemalan chicken, online pharmaceuticals, and unforgettable characters in a raucous but moving story of love and baseball. Season of Gene is a wild ride of a novel about a troubled man, the troubled women who love him and a legendary baseball bat that could either save their lives or get them killed.

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John R. Gold and Margaret M. Gold

This book provides the first full overview of the changing relationship between cities and the Olympic events from 1896 to the present day. It contains 20 specially commissioned and original essays written by a team of distinguished authors from the UK and overseas. Blending critical conceptual insight with grounded case study, "Olympic Cities "explores the historical experience of staging the Olympics from the point of view of the host city. Its contents are divided into three parts. The first provides overviews of the Olympic events from the inception of the modern Games to the present, with parallel but complementary chapters on the progress of the Summer Olympics, the Winter Games, and the cultural and artistic festivals. The second part comprises systematic surveys of five key aspects of activity involved in staging the Olympics: financing the Games; place promotion; accommodating spectacle; tourism; urban regeneration. The final part consists of chronologically-arranged portraits of host cities: St Louis (1904); London (1908); Berlin (1936); Montreal (1976); Los Angeles (1984); Barcelona (1992); Sydney (2000); Salt Lake City (2002), Athens (2004). A substantive introduction and afterword by the editors supply the context for the different chapters and draw out the key lessons to be learned.

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Peter & Leni Gillman

The North Face of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps was one of the most dangerous climbs in the mountaineering world, costing the lives of numerous intrepid explorers. In February 1966, two teams - one from Germany, the other a British/American party - decided to try to climb it in a straight line from bottom to top. Astonishingly, neither team knew about the other's attempt until they both arrived at the hotel at the bottom of the Eiger. Suddenly, the race was on. John Harlin led the Anglo/American team and decided the best approach was a swift, lightweight assault on the summit. The Germans, led by Jorg Lehne, had a large team with plenty of equipment, designed to make slow, relentless progress to the top. Watching on, and reporting on events for the Daily Telegraph, was young journalist Peter Gillman - for the Eiger is the most public of mountains, where tourists can watch the life or death dramas from the comfort of the hotel terrace. Now, almost 50 years on, Gillman recalls the tragic events that took place on the Eiger, and assesses how the climb affected those who took part. For some, it would end in death, whereas for mountaineer Chris Bonington it would be the making of his reputation. It was an epic ascent with tragic consequences, redolent of the golden age of adventure.

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Geoff Herbach

For Adam Reed, basketball is a passport. Adam s basketball skills have taken him from an orphanage in Poland to a loving adoptive mother in Minnesota. When he s tapped to play on a select AAU team along with some of the best players in the state, it just confirms that basketball is his ticket to the good life: to new friendships, to the girl of his dreams, to a better future.