Showing results for "Sport" in Literary Fiction

Eine literarische Eroberung des Fitnessstudios: clever, witzig und wild Glänzende Spiegel, definierte Körper, legere Flirts am Tresen. Die Protagonistin in Verena Keßlers knalligem Roman liebt ihren neuen Job im MEGA GYM. Es gibt keinen Leistungsdruck, keine Überstunden, dafür liebenswerte Kolleginnen und einen Chef, der stolzer Feminist ist. Alles perfekt, wäre da nicht die klitzekleine Lüge, zu der sie sich im Einstellungsgespräch hat hinreißen lassen. Sie habe kürzlich erst entbunden, hat sie behauptet, und jetzt wollen alle Babyfotos sehen und fragen ständig nach »dem Kleinen«.

When The Sport of the Gods opens, the Hamilton family is doing relatively well. They have stable jobs and good reputations as servants for a wealthy Southern family - but they also have little sense of how tenuous their existence has become. When money goes missing, the supposed victim points a finger at patriarch Berry Hamilton, and Berry is sentenced to ten years of hard labor. In response, Berry’s wife, Fannie, and his two children, Joe and Kit, migrate to New York City. Their hope is that the great city of the North will provide them with a fresh start.

Berry Hamilton was living a pretty good life - up until he was accused of stealing money from his employer. Despite having worked for the family for 20 years, Berry is found guilty of a crime he did not commit and sentenced to prison. As his wife and children turn to the community, they find themselves shunned. Left with no other choice, Fannie Hamilton and her two children, Joe and Kitty, pick everything up and move to Harlem.

There is something about the number 3. The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two. Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore themes and literary avenues that classic authors were so adept at creating.

In the seaside town of San Benedetto, soccer (or calcio) is more than just a sport: it's an obsession. Twenty-two-year-old Etto, however, couldn't care less about soccer. His twin brother Luca, a rising soccer star, died tragically in a motorcycle accident, and their mother, unable to cope with her grief, drowned herself on the anniversary of Luca's death.

Vernon Rand is a charismatic figure whose great love - whose life, in fact - is climbing. He lives alone in California, where he combats the drudgery of a roofing job with the thrill of climbing in the nearby mountain ranges. Sure of only his talent and nerve, Rand decides to test himself in the French Alps, with their true mountaineering and famed, fearsome peaks. He soon learns that the most perilous moments are, for him, the moments when he feels truly alive.

The Devil’s Stocking is the story of Ruby Calhoun, a boxer accused of murder in a shadowy world of low-purse fighters, cops, con artists, and bar girls. Chronicling a battle for truth and human dignity which gives way to a larger story of life and death decisions, literary grandmaster Nelson Algren’s last novel is a fitting capstone to a long and brilliant career.

The Natural, Bernard Malamud's first novel, published in 1952, is also the first - and some would say still the best - novel ever written about baseball. In it Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material - the story of a superbly gifted "natural" at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era - and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work.

True has a singular path: to be the greatest soccer player of her generation. And she will do whatever it takes to be the top girl on the field. True has to stay focused because her family is crumbling. With the loss of her mother, True is forced to take care of her autistic younger sister while her grieving father wastes his time gambling. And high school isn’t much better. While True’s teammates are getting taller and growing up, she’s hardening around the edges, at a loss for what it means to be a typical teen girl.

In her debut novel, author Jaclyn Gilbert weaves together the strands of two lives that form a union as finely nuanced and delicate as a spider’s web - and just as vulnerable. Following the relationship of Murray and his ex-wife, Nancy, in alternating narratives, we experience their early moments of hope and desire as well as their fears and failings. With poignancy and grace, Late Air traces the collapse of a marriage, exhausted by time and trauma, and one couple’s journey to regain their footing.

Darren has two big talents: cricket and trouble. It is no surprise, then, that he becomes an Australian sporting star of the bad-boy variety - one of those men who's always got away with things and just keeps going...until the day we meet him, middle aged and in the boot of a car, and everything pointing towards a shallow grave.

James McConnell’s one wish is that his nine-year-old son will finally be healthy enough to play a game of catch. Then he and his wife, Emily, receive news they’ve dreaded: Aaron’s cancer has relapsed. As the family steels themselves for a draining treatment regimen in yet another hospital, Aaron receives the gift of a lifetime - a personal visit from one of his favorite professional baseball players - and the chance to make a bold request, his wish: To see his dad play in one major league game.