Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in Sports

India Harris didn't have the best start in life. Abandoned as a baby, she and her twin brother, Kit, spent their lives in foster care, only having each other to rely on. Then, at a young age, a relationship with the wrong man left India pregnant. Wanting to give her son the life she never had, she put herself through school and graduated with honors. Now, at the age of 30, she's a highly respected therapist.

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.

After a two-year struggle to conceive ends with her husband getting another woman pregnant, Grace "Britches Get Stitches" Evans is taking out her frustrations on the roller-derby track. Full-contact violence and absolutely no cheating men? Best divorce-support group ever. Grace is reclaiming one piece of her broken heart at a time - starting with the family dog, which she lost in the divorce. When the dognapping ends with a call to the police, the best revenge shows up at her door in the form of Officer Jason Bradley. He's hot. He loves animals. And he's her ex-husband's best friend.

When hockey phenom Billie-Jo Barker returns home and decides to play in the local Friday night hockey league, all hell breaks loose. Not because Billie's talent is in question but because Billie is a woman. And though these are modern times, some of the local guys still have a problem letting a girl into their "men's club".

After the romantic gesture of the century, Evan Allen is now faced with no friends, ineligible to play ball...and too late to get the girl. He's starting over alone and doesn't know quite how to proceed, until certain members of "The Crew" step in, taking him under their wing. It doesn't take the ladies long to notice him either.

Highlights in this set include "The Night Manny Mota Tied the Record", "The Battery", and "The Thrill of the Grass". In a plot that preceded anything written by Mitch Albom, "The Night Manny Mota Tied the Record" explores the feelings after the death of Yankee catcher Thurmon Munson. Would a hardcore (non-Yankee) baseball fan give his life to save Munson's? "The Battery" takes readers to Santo Domingo where a wizard created in the vein of author Terry Pratchett sees the birth of baseball playing twins.

"It's one hell of a sledgehammer to the chest when your baseball career comes to an end. It's like you finally realize that baseball never loved you back. All the sleepless nights, the hours spent at the gym trying to stay fit, the conditioning, the training, the mental preparation, the holidays missed, the birthdays passed, the memories you didn't get to make with your family...all for what? It's not like baseball lost any sleep over you."

Quincy has baggage, and lots of it. After a tragic accident spins her world on its axis, she finds herself as a single mother, raising a newborn nephew she never knew she had. Between parenthood, her full-time job, and dealing with the suffocating grief of losing her sister, every day is a struggle. When they begin to cross paths unexpectedly and often, an unlikely friendship starts to evolve. Feelings change. Lines get crossed. What happens next surprises them both....

Sure, I'd heard the stories of the groupies before. Who hasn't? I've just been more sheltered than my teammates. So what? I didn't expect her to be smart. Witty. Kind. She brings me to my knees in every way - except one. That part? I'm saving until the time is right. So how in the hell did I end up falling for a groupie like Tiffany? And how in the hell is this going to work when everyone at my job has had a piece of the one thing I haven't?

My name is Jason Hart. As the best defensive lineman in the country, I eat, sleep, and breathe football. That is, until I have a random meeting with a little boy that just lost his father. We have more in common than you might think and it creates an unlikely bond. As our friendship grows, so do my feelings for his mother. I know Addison, as a recent widow, isn't ready to date again. But I want to get to know her better in spite of all her rejections. Is it possible that I, a self-proclaimed bachelor, could be having a Change of Hart?

We're the Harts. Between an engagement, a wedding, and an adoption, we've had the best year of our lives. Things have never looked better for Jaxon, Addison, and myself. But just because you say "I do" doesn't mean you get a happily ever after. And sometimes you get tackled more in life than you ever did on the football field. The only way we're going to make it through is if we do it together...Hart to heart.

Magic Time is vintage Kinsella. It is a novel of hope and promise and baseball that becomes humorous, enchanting fiction.

Butterfly Winter, W.P. Kinsella's first novel in 15 years, is the story of Julio and Esteban Pimental, twins born in the Caribbean country of Courteguay, a lush and enchanted but impoverished enclave on the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic where time moves at its own pace and reality is open to question. The brothers are destined to play ball in America, and to shape the history of their baseball-crazed homeland. They mature quickly and by the age of 10 they leave home for the Major Leagues.

All choices have consequences, only sometimes they're...delayed. Cortland Nash fled Dartmouth to avoid being arrested for murder, but his best friend, Ford Delgado, is in danger. Cort returns, prepared to keep his head down, and do whatever it takes to keep Ford breathing, but when he finds a beautiful young woman out in the snow, frozen in fear, his plans change. He needs to make sure she's safe - even if the greatest danger is him.

Nothing could stop Tim Rowe, the assistant coach of the Dartmouth Cobras, from falling in love with Madeline, but love alone can't satisfy every need. Sometimes, to reach the goal, you have to take the chance with a...Blind Pass.

Some people get tattoos - pieces of art that enhance or reveal something about them that they like. Other people, like me, are branded by something - actions or words. "No one will ever love you, Rowan, you're not worthy." Those are the words that created my blemish, my scar, my mark upon my soul. They were words whispered by the woman who should have loved me most.

After overcoming a potentially career-ending concussion, Tyler Vanek, Dartmouth Cobras' first line forward, couldn't be happier with his life. Until his boyhood hero worship for Raif Zovko, a newly acquired player, develops into more. His mistress, "Chicklet", encourages him to explore his feelings, and with her enjoyment of toying with the powerful Dom, Tyler figures it might be fun.

In an instant he became her hero. Then he became her lover and her friend. My name is Jaxon Hart. You watched me grow up. You watched me fight for my life. Now, I’m fighting for hers. From the second I laid eyes on Annika Leander, I wanted to help her. Protect her. Vindicate her. But she’s got baggage to get through. Hell, we both do. A funny thing happens, though, when you finally connect with someone in a different way than you ever have before. The baggage doesn’t seem so heavy. I suppose that’s really the only thing that matters when the heart gets involved.

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.

"He shoots and he scores! Lightning Logan strikes again." That was me, Lightning Logan Jackson, because I was as fast as lightning on the ice. Playing for the NHL had been my dream since I was six years old, when my dad took me to my first hockey game. Hockey was my life. It consumed me. It was the one thing in life that I could commit to. Relationships were a no. Sex with beautiful women and no strings attached was a yes. I was a bachelor - happy and living the dream. Then the accident happened, and the doctors told me I'd never play hockey again.