The Glass Castle meets A League of Their Own in Solo, a candid and moving memoir about family, loss, and reconciliation from Hope Solo, the supremely talented, headline-making goalkeeper for the U.S. women’s national soccer team. During the 2011 Women’s World Cup, Solo became an idol, role model, and sex symbol to a new generation of young American sports enthusiasts, inspiring the kind of intense devotion not seen since the days of Mia Hamm. An Olympic gold medalist and arguably America’s sexiest athlete, Hope has been featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated (twice), in ESPN: The Magazine, and as a contestant on the hit ABC television show Dancing with the Stars, and her poignant, compelling, and profoundly inspiring personal history will score big with her legion of fans.

The remarkable Mary Nisbet was the Countess of Elgin in Romantic-era Scotland and the wife of the seventh Earl of Elgin. When Mary accompanied her husband to diplomatic duty in Turkey, she changed history. She helped bring the smallpox vaccine to the Middle East, struck a seemingly impossible deal with Napoleon, and arranged the removal of famous marbles from the Parthenon. But all of her accomplishments would be overshadowed, however, by her scandalous divorce. Drawing from Mary's own letters, scholar Susan Nagel tells Mary's enthralling, inspiring, and suspenseful story in vibrant detail.

Want to impress the hot stranger at the bar who asks for your take on Infinite JestDying to shut up the blowhard in front of you who’s pontificating on Cormac McCarthy’s “recurring road narratives”Having difficulty keeping Francine Prose and Annie Proulx straightFor all those overwhelmed readers who need to get a firm grip on the relentless onslaught of must-read books to stay on top of the inevitable conversations that swirl around them, Lauren Leto’s Judging a Book by Its Lover is manna from literary heaven! A hilarious send-up of—and inspired homage to—the passionate and peculiar world of book culture, this guide to literary debate leaves no reader or author unscathed, at once adoring and skewering everyone from Jonathan Franzen to Ayn Rand to Dostoyevsky and the people who read them.

What can we learn about life, love, and artillery from an eighty-two-year-old man whose favorite hobby is firing his homemade cannonsVisit by visit often with his young daughters in tow author Michael Perry is about to find out.Toiling in a shop Perry describes as "an antique store stocked by Rube Goldberg, curated by Hunter Thompson, and rearranged by a small earthquake," Tom Hartwig makes gag shovel handles, parts for quarter-million-dollar farm equipment, and now and then batches of potentially "extralegal" explosives. As he approaches his sixtieth wedding anniversary with his wife, Arlene, Tom, famous for driving a team of oxen in local parades, has an endless reservoir of stories dating back to days of his prize Model A, and an anti-authoritarian streak refreshed daily by the four-lane interstate that was shoved through his front yard in 1965 and now dumps over 8 million vehicles past his kitchen window every year. And yet Visiting Tom is dominated by the elderly man's equanimity and ultimately when he and Perry converse over the kitchen table as husbands and as the fathers of daughters unvarnished tenderness.

Whether you're a first-time gardener or a veteran, you'll find something to inspire you in this beautifully written book that reveals the myriad ways in which working in a garden can enhance your life and deepen your connection to the world.Season by season, Diane Dreher leads you through a journey of peace and renewal. A monthly set of gardening tasks helps you plan, design, and care for your garden, along with illuminating details of gardening history, lore, and tradition. But here you'll also find ways to tend your own inner garden: how to plant seeds of ideas and dreams, weed out bad habits, and design new challenges one step at a time. Brimming with life-enhancing strategies and filled with words of wisdom that will invigorate your spirit, Inner Gardening is a book to treasure and use every day, indoors and out.

On the night of Monday, May 4, 1998, in Vatican territory, the bodies of the commander of the Swiss Guard, his wife, and a young lance corporal were found in the barracks of the picturesque force entrusted with protecting the pope. It was the worst bloodbath to take place in more than a century in the heart of the supreme authority of the world's one billion Catholics. Four hours later, the Vatican announced that the lance corporal, twenty-three-year-old Cdric Tornay, had shot the couple, then committed suicide in "a fit of madness" brought on by frustration with the unit's discipline -- a conclusion it reaffirmed after a nine-month internal inquiry.But as John Follain's hard-hitting expose shows, the official report was a travesty, a tissue of suppositions, contradictions, and omissions. Based on an exhaustive three-year investigation, City of Secrets reveals how the Vatican, the oldest and most secretive autocracy in the world, staged an elaborate plot to obstruct justice -- and hide the scandals it dared not confess.

In 2005 Uzodinma Iweala stunned readers and critics alike with Beasts of No Nation, his debut novel about child soldiers in West Africa. Now his return to Africa has produced Our Kind of People, a non-fiction account of the AIDS crisis every bit as startling and original. HIV/AIDS has been reported as one of the most destructive diseases in recent memory tearing apart communities and ostracizing the afflicted. But the emphasis placed on death, destruction, and despair hardly captures the many and varied effects of the epidemic, or the stories of the extraordinary people who live and die under its watch.Our Kind of People opens our minds to these stories, introducing a new set of voices and altering the way we speak and think about disease. Iweala embarks on a remarkable journey through his native Nigeria, meeting individuals and communities that are struggling daily to understand both the impact and meaning of HIV/AIDS. He speaks with people from all walks of life the ill and the healthy, doctors, nurses, truck drivers, sex workers, shopkeepers, students, parents, and children. Their testimonies are by turns uplifting, alarming, humorous, and surprising, and always unflinchingly candid. Integrating his own experiences with these voices, Iweala creates at once a deeply personal exploration of life, love, and connection in the face of disease, and an incisive critique of our existing ideas of health and happiness.Beautifully written and heartbreakingly honest, Our Kind of People goes behind the headlines of an unprecedented epidemic to show the real lives it affects, illuminating the scope of the crisis and a continent's valiant struggle.

With his career at a standstill and his golf game a shadow of its former mediocrity, TV writer and ESPN.com contributor Bob Smiley decided the time had come to turn to the one person who might be able to help: Tiger Woods. So, in January of 2008, Smiley set out to follow the game's greatest player from the gallery for every hole of an entire season and to absorb all that he could.Smiley traveled from the seaside cliffs of San Diego to the deserts of Dubai, through the hallowed gates of Augusta National, and on to arguably the greatest U.S. Open of all time back at Torrey Pines, where, in a legendary duel with charismatic journeyman Rocco Mediate, Woods won his fourteenth major on one leg.Smiley chronicles every dramatic and often hysterical moment of his journey with Tiger, including his off-course run-ins with Arabian sandstorms, ex-con ticket scalpers, and the motley assortment of strangers who became friends along the way.Told from the perspective of a true golf fan, Follow the Roar is a once-in-a-lifetime adventure through the most spectacular and inspiring season in Tiger Woods's celebrated career. In addition to the thrill of witnessing all 604 holes Woods played in '08, Smiley found in Tiger both inspiration and the gutsy embodiment of what it really means to be an athlete and a man.

You know there is a novel locked inside of you chock-full of conflict, humor, irony, enthralling events and fascinating characters. What you don't know is how to set it free.Practical Advice, Hands-On HelpRespected author and professional writing instructor Lou Willett Stanek's New York workshops have enabled scores of aspiring novelists to realize their dreams of completing credible and compelling manu*s. Here, in a positive, user-friendly format, she offers not only encouragement and motivation, but Clear, Step-By-Step Instructions To Accomplish Your Goal from original conception through final draft.Learn How To: Set up and stick to a writing schedule Create unforgettable characters Follow strong plotting and solid structure guidelines Choose a viewpoint and develop conflict Handle flashbacks and transitions Not Just Philosophy Or A Simple Motivational Tool, This Is The Book That Tells You How To Succeed

The critically acclaimed author of Good-bye and Amen, Leeway Cottage, and More Than You Know returns with a sharply perceptive and emotionally resonant novel about all the ways we talk about one another, the sometimes fine line between showing concern and doing damage, and the difficulty of knowing the true obligations of friendshipGossipBeth Gutcheon "Did you know that the origin of the word gossip in English is 'god-sibling'It's the talk between people who are godparents to the same child, people who have a legitimate loving interest in the person they talk about. It's talk that weaves a net of support and connection beneath the people you want to protect."Loviah "Lovie" French owns a small, high-end dress shop on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Renowned for her taste and discretion, Lovie is the one to whom certain women turn when they need "just the thing" for major life events baptisms and balls, weddings and funerals or when they just want to dish in the dressing room. Among the people who depend on Lovie's confidence are her two best friends since boarding school: Dinah Wainwright and Avis Metcalf. Outspoken and brimming with confidence, Dinah made a name for herself as a columnist covering the doings of New York's wealthiest and most fabulous. Shy, proper Avis, in many ways Dinah's opposite, rose to prominence in the art world with her quiet manners, hard work, and precise judgment. Despite the deep affection they both feel for Lovie, they have been more or less allergic to each other since a minor incident decades earlier that has been remembered and resented with what will prove to be unimaginable consequences. These uneasy acquaintances become unwillingly bound to each other when Dinah's favorite son and Avis's only daughter fall in love and marry. On the surface, Nick and Grace are the perfect match a playful, romantic, buoyant, and beautiful pair. But their commitment will be strained by time and change: career setbacks, reckless choices, the birth of a child, jealousies, and rumor. At the center of their orbit is Lovie, who knows everyone's secrets and manages them as wisely as she can. Which is not wisely enough, as things turn out a fact that will have a shattering effect on all their lives.An astute chronicler of everything that makes us human, Beth Gutcheon delivers her most powerful and emotionally devastating novel to date. Gossip is a tale of intimacy and betrayal, trust and fidelity, friendship, competition, and motherhood that explores the myriad ways we use and abuse "information" about others be it true, false, or imagined to sustain, and occasionally destroy, one another.

Arch and unrepentant, Will Leitch, founding editor of Deadspin.com, is the mouthpiece for all the frustrated fans who just want their games back from big money, bloated egos, and blathering sportscasters. Always a fan first and a sportswriter second, Leitch considers the perfection of fantasy leagues and the meaninglessness of the steroids debate as he exposes Olympic fetishes, parses Shaq's rap attack on Kobe, shares a brew with John Rocker and his surprising girlfriend, and reveals what ESPN and the beer companies really think about you. If you or a fan you love is suffering from a sense of listless dissatisfaction brought on by the leagues and networks, God Save the Fan is your new manifesto.

In 1692 Puritan Samuel Sewall sent twenty people to their deaths on trumped-up witchcraft charges. The nefarious witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts represent a low point of American history, made famous in works by Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne (himself a descendant of one of the judges), and Arthur Miller. The trials might have doomed Sewall to infamy except for a courageous act of contrition now commemorated in a mural that hangs beneath the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House picturing Sewall's public repentance. He was the only Salem witch judge to make amends.But, remarkably, the judge's story didn't end there. Once he realized his error, Sewall turned his attention to other pressing social issues. Struck by the injustice of the New England slave trade, a commerce in which his own relatives and neighbors were engaged, he authored "The Selling of Joseph," America's first antislavery tract. While his peers viewed Native Americans as savages, Sewall advocated for their essential rights and encouraged their education, even paying for several Indian youths to attend Harvard College. Finally, at a time when women were universally considered inferior to men, Sewall published an essay affirming the fundamental equality of the sexes. The text of that essay, composed at the deathbed of his daughter Hannah, is republished here for the first time.In Salem Witch Judge, acclaimed biographer Eve LaPlante, Sewall's great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, draws on family lore, her ancestor's personal diaries, and archival documents to open a window onto life in colonial America, painting a portrait of a man traditionally vilified, but who was in fact an innovator and forefather who came to represent the best of the American spirit.

From: Venus, Goddess of Love, 120 Main, Mt. OlympusTo: Stacy Temple, lapsed temptressStacy, Stacy, Stacy. You were so promising at the beginning: Sexy, smart, personable and funny. Great on dates and really great afterward-if you know what I mean. But this is a sad state of affairs; or, in your case, non-affairs! It's been nearly an entire year and you haven't had your way with even ONE eligible male. You've been working so hard concocting sexy lingerie for Thongs.com -- and really, Stacy, if that little pink velvet bustier didn't put you in the mood, I don't know what to say! -- that you haven't even tried to be coaxed out of your own thong.com!Are you listening, StacySeven days to find the perfect man -- or else!Happy hunting!

In the ninth century b.c., the Phoenician princess Jezebel orders the execution of all the prophets who refuse to worship the pagan god Baal. Commanded by an angel of God to flee Israel, Elijah seeks safety in the land of Zarephath, where he unexpectedly finds true love with a young widow. But this newfound rapture is to be cut short, and Elijah sees all of his hopes and dreams irrevocably erased as he is swept into a whirlwind of events that threatens his very existence. Written with the same masterful prose and clarity of vision that made The Alchemist an international phenomenon, The Fifth Mountain is a quietly moving account of a man touched by the hand of God who must triumph over his frustrations in a soul-shattering trial of faith.

Maybe the Moon, Armistead Maupin's first novel since ending his bestselling Tales of the City series, is the audaciously original chronicle of Cadence Roth -- Hollywood actress, singer, iconoclast and former Guiness Book record holder as the world's shortest woman. All of 31 inches tall, Cady is a true survivor in a town where -- as she says -- "you can die of encouragement." Her early starring role as a lovable elf in an immensely popular American film proved a major disappointment, since moviegoers never saw the face behind the stifling rubber suit she was required to wear. Now, after a decade of hollow promises from the Industry, she is reduced to performing at birthday parties and bat mitzvahs as she waits for the miracle that will finally make her a star. In a series of mordantly funny journal entries, Maupin tracks his spunky heroine across the saffron-hazed wasteland of Los Angeles -- from her all-too-infrequent meetings with agents and studio moguls to her regular harrowing encounters with small children, large dogs and human ignorance. Then one day a lanky piano player saunters into Cady's life, unleashing heady new emotions, and she finds herself going for broke, shooting the moon with a scheme so harebrained and daring that it just might succeed. Her accomplice in the venture is her best friend, Jeff, a gay waiter who sees Cady's struggle for visibility as a natural extension of his own war against the Hollywood Closet. As clear-eyed as it is charming, Maybe the Moon is a modern parable about the mythology of the movies and the toll it exacts from it participants on both sides of the screen. It is a work that speaks to the resilience of the human spirit from a perspective rarely found in literature.

The Men's Guide to the Women's Bathroom strives to answer life's most imponderable question: What Do Women Really Do in the BathroomWhen the witty and urbane Claire St. John leaves New York City and returns to Austin, Texas, she realizes that all of the good advice she has ever received has been from strangers in the women's bathroom. If only she'd listened before she'd married the wrong man and wound up on the losing end of a divorce. Swearing off men, Claire decides to take a big chance—she will quit her life as a lawyer and write the ultimate self-help book—a book detailing exactly what goes on in that most sacred feminine temple: the women's bathroom.But will the new how-to guru ever learn to take her own adviceWhile she's discovering the truth behind the bathroom door, re-assimilating to Texas culture by eating "nuclear" jalape?o carrots, speeding down highways through the famed Texas hill country, and even joining an ill-fated booze cruise, Claire St. John is fighting her feelings for Jake Armstrong, a dashing organic food entrepreneur who threatens to throw off the balance of her new life. Will she be able to handle the pressure or will she watch her love life get flushed away?

In the beginning, there was The Average American Male . Maxim called it "pure filth." Even Penthouse called it "appalling." The New York Times called it "the literary love child of Neil LaBute, Judy Blume, and Eminem." Now, Chad Kultgen's unforgettable antihero is back this time as a married man. I can feel something hot twisting and burning in the pit of my stomach. For a fleeting moment I think back to a time when I was with Casey, my girlfriend before Alyna....I tried to initiate something by grabbing her tit and kissing her when we walked through her front door. She turned to me and said something about how our relationship didn't always have to be about sex. I remember how much I wanted to smash something when she said that, how much I wanted to scream in her face that our relationship was only about sex....Relationships between men and women are only about sex. The rest of the sh*t is incidental. Welcome back.

You could hear the voices murmuring, small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body. A peerless American storyteller, Ray Bradbury brings wonders alive. The Illustrated Man is classic Bradbury eighteen startling visions of humankind destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin. In this phantasmagoric sideshow, living cities take their vengeance, technology awakens the most primal natural instincts, Martian invasions are foiled by the good life and the glad hand, and dreams are carried aloft in junkyard rockets. Provocative and powerful, Ray Bradbury The Illustrated Man is a kaleidoscopic blending of magic, imagination, and truth as exhilarating as interplanetary travel, as maddening as a walk in a million-year rain, and as comforting as simple, familiar rituals on the last night of the world.

Sportswriter Jack Byrnes is seeing lots of women...no matter how hard he tries not to. See, a funny thing happened to Jack on the way to his thirtieth birthday. Everywhere he goes, he runs into a woman from his past: there's Mary Ann, whose random appearance in an Arizona airport started this mess; Amy, The One that Got Away, who has abandoned Boston for a fiancé and the Upper West Side; Connie, The Recent Ex who left-and reappeared-without any explanation; Danielle, the Freshman Fling turned bestselling chick lit author; and Nikki, Jack's first kiss, now happily residing in the West Village with the woman of her dreams. Jack believes in a lot of things-his two best friends Bernie and Jeff, the Yankees, cold pizza to cure a hangover, the Yankees-but Fate has never been one of them. Still, this all can't be coincidence. Not when the Ghosts of Relationships Past show up just as Jack has met the perfect woman. The world must be trying to give Jack a signal, and maybe if he can read it right, this time he won't strike out.

There are hundreds of lives sown inside Pretty Little Mistakes, Heather McElhatton's singularly spectacular, breathtakingly unique novel that has more than 150 possible endings. You may end up in an opulent mansion or homeless down by the river; happily married with your own corporation or alone and pecked to death by ducks in London; a Zen master in Japan or morbidly obese in a trailer park. Is it destiny or decision that controls our fateYou can't change your past and start over from scratch in real life—but in Pretty Little Mistakes, you can! But be warned, choose wisely.

Dust to Dust is an extraordinary memoir about ordinary things: life and death, peace and war, the adventures of childhood and the revelations of adulthood. Benjamin Busch a decorated U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer who served two combat tours in Iraq, an actor on The Wire , and the son of celebrated novelist Frederick Busch has crafted a lasting book to stand with the finest work of Tim O'Brien or Annie Dillard. In elemental-themed chapters water, metal, bone, blood Busch weaves together a vivid record of a pastoral childhood in rural New York; Marine training in North Carolina, Ukraine, and California; and deployment during the worst of the war in Iraq, as seen firsthand. But this is much more than a war memoir. Busch writes with great poignancy about the resonance of a boyhood spent exploring rivers and woods, building forts, and testing the limits of safety. Most of all, he brings enormous emotional power to his reflections on mortality: in a helicopter going down; wounded by shrapnel in Ramadi; dealing with the sudden death of friends in combat and of parents back home. Dust to Dust is an unforgettable meditation on life and loss, and how the curious children we were remain alive in us all.