Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Sports Fiction

Tomorrow, the Wildcat varsity field hockey squad will play the first game of their new season. But at tonight’s team sleepover, the girls are all about forging the bonds of trust, loyalty, and friendship necessary to win. Everything hinges on the midnight initiation ceremony - a beloved tradition and the only facet of being a Wildcat that the girls control. Until now. Coach - a handsome former college player revered and feared in equal measure - changes the plan and spins his team on a new adventure.

It’s one single steamy July day at the West 4th Street Court in New York City, otherwise known as the Cage. Hotshot baller ESPN is wooing the scouts, Boo is struggling to guard the weird new guy named Waco, a Spike Lee wannabe has video rolling, and virgin Irene is sizing up six-foot-eight-and-a-half-inch-tall Chester. Nine of young-adult literature’s top writers reveal how it all goes down in this searing novel in short stories that each ingeniously pick up where the last one ends.

There’s nothing All Star pitcher Peter Friedman loves more than baseball. It’s his life. He breathes baseball, dreams about it, and works his tail off to be great. Most kids are nervous about starting high school, but Pete’s amazing arm is going to make his life pretty easy. When you’re the star, girls, popularity, and all-around stud status are sure to follow. But Pete’s freshman year doesn’t turn out as planned. A pitching accident over the summer ruins his arm. If he can’t play baseball, what is he supposed to do? If he isn’t the star pitcher, then who is he?

"One day I’m going to play for the U.S. Women’s National Team." That’s what Flora Dupre promised her mom, before her mom died of cancer. Flora and her mom had created a place called Soccerland, an escape world where they went and just talked soccer. And now Flora’s dream of playing for the U.S.A. might be coming true. Flora’s received the invitation of a lifetime: the chance to try out for the Under-15 U.S. Girls’ Soccer Team, an opportunity that could put Flora on the road to making her dream a reality and reaching the real "Soccerland".

Val and Chloe just don’t fit in at their fancy private school in Manhattan. Together, they ditch school, visit cemeteries and thrift shops, spend their days trolling the city streets, and have sleepovers during which they confide all their secret thoughts - like whether they believe in God, which guys they’re attracted to, and how Val feels after she gets hit on by a man she babysits for. Lately, Val has all kinds of questions. Especially about sex. So Val turns to the two people who have always given her the most honest answers possible: her mother and Chloe. Unfortunately, not even Val’s mother - an adult! - has all the answers.

When Marcus moves to a new town, he doesn't have any friends. While practicing football for impending tryouts, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with former NFL star Charlie Popovich, nicknamed "The King of Pop". Charlie is a charismatic prankster, and the best football player Marcus has ever seen. But when his behavior starts getting more and more erratic, Marcus learns a secret: Charlie is suffering from early onset Alzheimer's from the concussions he sustained while playing professional football.

Most high school sports teams have rivalries with other Schools. At Hamilton High, it’s a civil war: the football team versus the soccer team. And for her part, Lissa is sick of it. Her quarterback boyfriend, Randy, is always ditching her to go pick a fight or haze a freshman. And on three separate occasions Randy’s car has been egged while he and Lissa were inside, making out. She is done competing with a bunch of sweaty boys for her own boyfriend’s attention. Lissa decides to end the rivalry once and for all: She and the other players’ girlfriends go on a hookup strike.

Terrell Jamerson is the number one high school basketball player in the country. His team is poised to win the states. He’s got top colleges lined up to offer him scholarships, and press coverage at every game. Everyone says he could play in the NBA tomorrow. He’s living the dream, right? Danny Wilcox would tell you a different story. Danny is Terrell’s best friend and teammate, and a top prospect himself. But he sees that not all of the people buzzing around Terrell have his best interests at heart.

Danny's tall and skinny. Even though he's not "built", his arms are long enough to give his pitch a power so fierce that any college scout would sign him on the spot. Ninety-five-mile-an-hour fastball, but the boy's not even on a team. Every time he gets up on the mound, he loses it. Ball ends up so far out of the strike zone it's laughable. But at his private school, they don't expect much else from him. Danny's brown. Half-Mexican brown....

Fifteen-year-old Alyx Atlas was raised as a boy, yet she knows something others don't. She's a girl. And after her dad dies, it becomes painfully obvious that she must prove it now - to herself and to the world. Born with ambiguous genitalia, Alyx has always felt a little different. But it's after she sustains a terrible beating behind a 7-Eleven that she and her mother pack up their belongings and move from California to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to start a new life - and Alyx begins over again, this time as a girl.