Showing titles in Sports

Chicago Rebels goalie Erik gets his shot at love...but first he'll have to figure out what he did to offend the woman he's crushed on forever. Casey Higgins, assistant to the Chicago Rebels owner, has a smile for everyone who comes into the front office - everyone but goalie Erik Jorgenson. And he has no idea why. For the last year, she’s refused to give him a kind word, and finally, he’s had enough. At the Rebels holiday party he’ll uncover the root of their mysterious conflict and show this woman that goalkeepers do their best work...on their knees.

Jimmy Lee Hickam grew up along Red Dog Road, a dead-end strip of gravel and mud buried deep in the bowels of Appalachian Ohio. It is the poorest road, in the poorest county, in the poorest region of the state. To make things worse, the name Hickam is synonymous with trouble. Jimmy Lee hails from a heathen mix of thieves, moonshiners, drunkards, and general anti-socials that for decades have clung to both the hardscrabble hills and the iron bars of every jail cell in the region. This life, Jimmy Lee believes, is his destiny, someday working with his drunkard father at the sawmill, or sitting next to his arsonist brother in the penitentiary.

For Katie McKenna, passing out and landing in the arms of Washington DC Soaring Eagles baseball player AJ Williamson is one of those moments she'd rather forget. Embarrassed beyond belief, she tries to pretend the incident never happened. She puts the escapade behind her, choosing to spend the summer preparing for law school and admiring AJ safely from afar.

Seasoned pro golfer Travis McKinley is cruising toward a new season when he misses a putt on the 18th green. Just like that, he's down and out and off the Senior Tour, his career all but dead. Then Travis is visited by a mysterious stranger whose vision is clear. Go back to the beginning. The very beginning. Taking his advice both literally and to heart, Travis and his family travel to their ancestral home - Scotland. In the place where golf was born, he's able to look beyond getting the round ball in the round hole.

I never asked for the spotlight, but inheriting a pro hockey team pulls me into a world of chaos. All eyes are on me now. I’m no stranger to the world of hockey, but watching from the sidelines and calling the shots are two very different things. Especially when you’re not wanted.

Known for his record-breaking stats and womanizing ways, wide receiver, Buddy Carruthers, would give it all up for one chance to win the only woman he ever wanted, Emmy Meacham. Hard-won games, and traveling half the season kept Buddy from pursuing his secret passion. Even if he managed to corner her for a moment, would she still care?

Fed up with cheating women, Dan Alexander, star pitcher for the New York Nighthawks, grew restless. Searching for something more than a bar babe, he zeroed in on a girl in the stands. He never expected to see a beautiful chick pushing frankfurters. But the hot dog girl looked as smokin’ as the food she was selling. Holly Merrill found a place to hide in plain sight, as a vendor at Nighthawks’ stadium. Keeping her secret safe and simply happy to stay alive, she never considered finding love an option. After all, a bad girl doesn’t deserve a decent guy, does she?

Not too long ago, Max Best was stuck in a dead-end job, trudging from one day to the next and mourning the fact that his burning love of soccer was getting buried in a landslide of cold statistics and intangible tactics. Then, after saving an old man from a mugging, he was "cursed" with the ability to instantly ascertain a soccer player's attributes on sight and use that knowledge to upgrade his own skills. Now he's making a name for himself as an amateur team manager, but it's not enough for him to ditch his dud of a job.

Life changes overnight for coach John Harrison when his high school basketball team and state championship dreams are crushed under the weight of unexpected news. When the largest manufacturing plant shuts down and hundreds of families leave their town, John questions how he and his family will face an uncertain future. After reluctantly agreeing to coach cross-country, John and his wife, Amy, meet an aspiring athlete who’s pushing her limits on a journey toward discovery.

Training Ground, book one of the Girls of Summer series, introduced Emma Blakeley and Jamie Maxwell, two young athletes with seemingly bright soccer futures. In book two, Game Time, those futures caught up to them - and brought them back together. Now, in Outside the Lines, Jamie and Emma are forced to come to terms with their relationship as each dedicates herself to a lifelong dream: Making the 2015 World Cup roster for the US Women’s National Team, the top-ranked squad in the world.

Once in a great while a writer comes along who can truly capture the drama and passion of the life of a family. David James Duncan, author of the novel The River Why and the collection River Teeth, is just such a writer. And in The Brothers K he tells a story both striking and in its originality and poignant in its universality.

When football fanatic and loveable loser Max Best saved an old codger from a mugging, he never expected to be rewarded with the ability to immediately pinpoint a player's specific skills—and use that knowledge to up his own levels. Ever since that fateful night, Max has devoted himself to the game far more than any mere fan, becoming not only a serious footballer in his own right but a leader both on and off the pitch.

It’s been more than a decade since gang leader Billy Evans stepped away from his life on the wrong side of the law to mourn the murder of his wife. Yet when he is hit by a second tragedy, his first thoughts are not of loss, but of revenge. However, before he can make his first move, Billy is presented with an alternative method of extracting vengeance. One so intriguing that he quickly finds his past passion for organised violence reinvigorated.

There are few people who infuriate me more than pretty boy basketball player Luke Bantempelli. He’s all too aware there isn’t a girl on campus he can’t charm out of her skirt with nothing but a smile. So when one accidental kiss in a haunted house has us hooking up in secret, I know I’m losing my damn mind. Catching feelings will only lead to heartbreak, and I refuse to fall for the guy I’ve sworn to loathe for the rest of my life.

Travis McKinley is living the life he always dreamed of. He was an ordinary man living an ordinary life until a miraculous twist of fate led to him become a golf pro at the age of 50 and win the USPGA Senior Open. But recently Travis’ good fortunes have taken a turn for the worse, and his game is falling apart. Then, drunk in a bar one night, he gets into a brawl with a fellow golf pro, which is captured on camera and broadcast across America. Travis is hauled in front of the USPGA and banned from the tour for the rest of the season.

Cricket on the Beach is book one of the alternative history series Timeline 10/27/62 - Australia. Timeline 10/27/62 is set in a world in which the Cuban Missiles Crisis went wrong and the swinging '60s never happened. The thermonuclear madness might not have reached as far south as Australasia, but in the weeks and months after the Cuban Missiles War, many more people might have succumbed to the "On the Beach" syndrome had it not been for the distraction of a unique sporting odyssey.

Big Wednesday, based on the cult 1978 film by the same name, follows three California beach buddies begin to realize there is more to life than waxing down their surfboards as they ditch their alcoholic and unruly ways to go fight in the Vietnam War. When they reunite 10 years later, they find that things in Malibu are much different after fighting a war.

In the fight against the French, a treaty with the Sultan of Pulo Prabang, a piratical Malay state, may prove decisive. Captain Jack Aubrey and ship’s surgeon Stephen Maturin, along with a hand-picked crew, must survive the dangers of the high forties and convey a diplomatic envoy to ensure this key alliance, but dangers, both natural and man-made, will dog their every move.

Ford’s love life isn’t non-existent, it’s just hopelessly one-sided. And the only woman he’s ever wanted—his childhood best friend, Amber—doesn’t reciprocate his feelings. So why bother dating? When Amber’s fiancé leaves her pregnant without health insurance, she’s prepared to do it all alone—until childbirth causes complications with her heart and she needs minor heart surgery. Ford proposes a plan: a quickie wedding, insurance for Amber and her baby girl, and two years of platonically wedded bliss.

At a crossroads, my life a hot mess, I swiped right on the guy with the washboard abs and the tree-trunk thighs. His handle was Holt (yeah, really) but as soon as he opened the door, I recognized him: Hudson Grey, the hottest prospect in pro-hockey and apparently, secretly playing for my team. Not mind-blowing enough? He needed someone to punch his V-card, and I was only too happy to volunteer as tribute... Then he ghosted me when it got to be too much. A year later, my life is back on track and I’m a candidate firefighter at legendary Engine 6.