Paul Adams is the shortest kid at his high school, and the school bullies relentlessly pick on him. He spends the entire day wishing school would end so he can escape to his favorite sport of rock climbing. Lily Small is athletic, attractive, and, despite her last name, is actually very tall. Another kid, who looks almost like a grown man, introduces himself with a long Polynesian name, but says everyone calls him "Big," and he seems to like the nickname! As they get to know each other, Paul, Big, and Small discover they have a lot in common as outsiders in their high school.

Carrie Soto is fierce, and her determination to win at any cost has not made her popular. But by the time she retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She has shattered every record and claimed twenty Grand Slam titles. And if you ask Carrie, she is entitled to every one. She sacrificed nearly everything to become the best, with her father, Javier, as her coach. A former champion himself, Javier has trained her since the age of two.

The author of the best selling Left Behind series, Jerry B. Jenkins is one of the most widely read and deeply admired novelists of our time. With Hometown Legend he has written an inspirational tale placed firmly in the nation's heartland, where football, family, and faith are everything, and where one town's greatest contest has begun.

In this heartwarming and candid memoir, Tim Howard does something he would never do on a soccer field: he drops his guard. As fiercely protective about his privacy as he is guarding the goal for the US national team and for Everton in the English Premier League, Howard opens up for the first time about how a hyperactive kid from New Jersey with Tourette's syndrome defied the odds to become one of the world’s premier goalkeepers.

Jalen DeLuca loves baseball. Unfortunately his dad can't afford to keep him on the travel team. His dad runs a diner and makes enough to cover the bills, but there isn't enough to cover any extras. So Jalen decides to take matters into his own hands, and he sneaks into the home of the New York Yankees' star second baseman, James Yager, and steals a couple of balls from his personal batting cage. He knows that if he can sell them, he'll be able to keep himself on the team.

With two all-star college football players for brothers and a former Atlanta Falcons defensive lineman for a father, it is only natural for sixth-grade quarterback Benjamin Redd to follow in their footsteps. However, after his dad receives a heartbreaking ALS diagnosis — connected to all those hard hits and tackles he took on the field — Ben’s mom becomes more determined than ever to get Ben to quit football.

Rick Reilly has been a senior sports writer for Sports Illustrated for the past 17 years, and has been named "Sports Writer of The Year" seven times. Now, he pokes his nose into the world of golf. How does he do it? By caddying ("looping") for top players, celebrities, and some really bad run-of-the-mill golfers, Reilly gains insight into the minds of golfers, their winning or less-than-winning ways, and what they actually mutter when they're in the middle of play.

When Tory White's mom gets a job with the Atlanta Falcons, Tory demonstrates his uncanny ability to call football plays before they happen. With Troy's genius, the Falcons could be unstoppable-- if only the coaches would take him seriously!

Meet Will Carter, but feel free to call him Carter. (Yes, he knows it's a lazy nickname, but he didn't have much say in the matter.) He has a stuttering problem, particularly around boobs and belly buttons. He battles Attention Deficit Disorder every minute of every day...unless he gets distracted. He's a virgin, mostly because he's no good at talking to girls.

Blue Collar Comedy star Bill Engvall is just a guy. He's been one his whole life. He can't help it; he was born that way. And that makes him an expert on the subject. For the record, here's the official definition of a guy: a person who doesn't think before he speaks. He can't. He's not that deep. Because a guy has only three basic needs: eating, sleeping, and sex. That's it. Just a Guy chronicles a lifetime in pursuit of those needs.

Derek Jeter is a legend in professional sports and a role model for many youths around the country. While leading the New York Yankees to five World Series Championships and achieving myriad milestones and accomplishments on and off the field, including 13 All-Star nods and membership in baseball's exclusive 3,000-hit club, Jeter has established a reputation of unparalleled character, credibility, dedication, and excellence. When Jeter was a boy, he had the dream of becoming the shortstop for the New York Yankees.

Kurt is a talented but emotionally damaged football player. Danny is a rising star on the gymnastics team, an outsider in a high school where the football team rules. But the two form an unlikely friendship, and when one member of the gym team is viciously assaulted by the quarterback and his cronies, Kurt rises to his defense and challenges the entrenched stereotypes of high-school sports. This is that rare book that authentically captures the voices, fierce loyalties, and harsh justice of teenage boys.

Twelve-year-old Danny Walker may be the smallest kid on the basketball court, but don't tell him that. Because no one plays with more heart or court sense. But none of that matters when he is cut from his local travel team, the very same team his father led to national prominence as a boy. Danny's father knows Danny isn't the only kid who was cut for the wrong reason, and together, this washed-up former player and a bunch of never-say-die kids prove that the heart simply cannot be measured.

Forced to live on his own after his mom dies and her boyfriend abandons him, 12-year-old Jayson does whatever it takes to get by. He will do anything to avoid the foster care system. Besides, his real home has always been the beat-up basketball court behind the projects in the North Carolina hills, and his family has always been his friends and teammates. He manages to get away with his deception until the day he gets caught stealing a new pair of basketball sneakers. Game over. Within a day a social worker places him with a family from the other side of town, the Lawtons.

Winner of the National Book Award, Pete Hautman pens a futuristic satire brimming with wry humor and honored by a Booklist starred review. Welcome to the United Safer States of America in 2076! Here, prisoners perform all manual labor. And the country is finally safe. Sixteen-year-old Bo ignores governmental protective devices capturing every action and word. He endures the avalanche of safety regulations. But when he’s accused of spreading a rash at school, anger and jealousy threaten to override his daily dose of calming Levulor and earn him a "job" in the Canadian tundra.

Jake Cullen is a freshman quarterback playing high school football in the high-pressure land of Friday Night Lights (Texas). He is also the brother of Wyatt Cullen, who quarterbacked his team to the Texas State Championship last season - not to mention the son of former NFL quarterback and local legend, Troy Cullen. To be a Cullen in Texas is to be royalty…and a quarterback. All of which leaves 14-year-old Jake in a Texas-sized shadow, a tall order for any boy, especially one who's merely a freshman.

Will Tyler can fly on a football field. He may not be the biggest running back around, but no one can touch him when it comes to hitting the hole and finding the end zone. And no one can match his love of the game. When Will has a football in hand, he may as well be flying for real because life can't touch him - his dad isn't so defeated, his town isn't so poor, and everyone has something to cheer for. All of which does him no good if the football season is canceled.

Fifteen-year-old Spencer Harris is a proud nerd, an awesome big brother, and a David Beckham in training. He's also transgender. After transitioning at his old school leads to a year of isolation and bullying, Spencer gets a fresh start at Oakley, the most liberal private school in Ohio. At Oakley, Spencer seems to have it all: more accepting classmates, a decent shot at a starting position on the boys' soccer team, great new friends, and maybe even something more than friendship with one of his teammates.

Landon Dorch longs to play football, and he is definitely built for the game. Unfortunately two things stand in his way: his mother's worries and the fact that he is deaf. Landon hopes that the family's move to a new town will offer him a fresh start and that he can leave behind the teasing and taunts that marred life at his former school. But his speech problems and his cochlear implants seem to invite bullying. Luckily he is not without help, starting with his loving and quirky family and then a great new friend on the team.

Running back Mick Johnson has dreams: dreams of cutting back, finding the hole, breaking in to the open, and running free with nothing but green grass ahead. He has dreams of winning and of being the best. But football is a cruel sport. It requires power, grace, speed, quickness, and knowledge of the game. It takes luck, too. One crazy bounce can turn a likely victory into sudden defeat. What elite athlete wouldn’t look for an edge? A way to make him bigger, stronger, faster?

When Tory White's mom gets a job with the Atlanta Falcons, Tory demonstrates his uncanny ability to call football plays before they happen. With Troy's genius, the Falcons could be unstoppable-- if only the coaches would take him seriously!

In the summer of 2014, Tim Howard became an overnight sensation after more than 10 years as one of America's leading professional soccer players. His record-breaking 15 saves for the United States national team against Belgium in the World Cup electrified a nation that had only recently woken up to the Beautiful Game after decades of hibernation. In this inspiring and candid memoir, the beloved US and Everton goalkeeper finally allows himself to do something that he would never do on the field: He drops his guard.

From the mind of basketball legend and Academy Award-winning storyteller Kobe Bryant comes this radically original portrait of five young basketball players, one enlightening coach, and the awesome transformative power of the game. Filled with insights about the mental stamina and emotional clarity that peak performance requires, this is an indispensable story for young athletes, coaches, educators, and anyone interested in the astonishing potential of team sports to unlock individual growth.

Frank Ryder is unstoppable on the baseball field—his pitches arrive faster than a batter can swing, giving his opponents no chance. He’s being heralded as a game-changing pitcher. But within the maelstrom of press, adulation, and wild speculation, Frank is a man alone. Haunted by a tragic incident from years past, he yearns to be the best but cannot reconcile the guilt he carries with the man everyone believes him to be.

Blue Collar Comedy star Bill Engvall is just a guy. He's been one his whole life. He can't help it; he was born that way. And that makes him an expert on the subject. For the record, here's the official definition of a guy: a person who doesn't think before he speaks. He can't. He's not that deep. Because a guy has only three basic needs: eating, sleeping, and sex. That's it. Just a Guy chronicles a lifetime in pursuit of those needs.

In the 1930s and 1940s, there was nothing bigger in Texas high school football than the Masonic Home Mighty Mites - a group of orphans bound together by hardship and death. These youngsters, in spite of being outweighed by at least 30 pounds per man, were the toughest football team around. They began with nothing - not even a football - yet in a few years were playing for the state championship on the highest level of Texas football. This is a winning tribute to a courageous band of underdogs from a time when America desperately needed fresh hope and big dreams.

Missing Links is the story of four middle-class buddies who live outside Boston and play golf together at Ponkaquogue Municipal Golf Links and Deli, not so fondly known as Ponky. An 18-hole garbage dump with hazards that include a concrete river surrounded by a chain-link fence and the pillars of the elevated train that runs through the course, it is reputed to be the worst golf course in America.

Meet Will Carter, but feel free to call him Carter. (Yes, he knows it's a lazy nickname, but he didn't have much say in the matter.) He has a stuttering problem, particularly around boobs and belly buttons. He battles Attention Deficit Disorder every minute of every day...unless he gets distracted. He's a virgin, mostly because he's no good at talking to girls.

With his flights of improvisation around the basket and his towering afro, Julius Erving became one of the most charismatic (and revolutionary) players basketball has ever known. But while the public has long revered this cultural icon, few have ever known of the double life of Julius Erving. Dr. J traces the inner lives of the nearly perfect player and the imperfect man - and how he has come to terms with both.

Before Josh and Jordan Bell were streaking up and down the court, their father was learning his own moves. In this prequel to Newbery Medal winner The Crossover, Chuck Bell takes center stage, as listeners get a glimpse of his childhood and how he became the jazz music worshiping basketball star his sons look up to. A novel in verse with all the impact and rhythm listeners have come to expect from Kwame Alexander, Rebound will go back in time to visit the childhood of Chuck "Da Man" Bell during one pivotal summer when young Charlie is sent to stay with his grandparents, where he discovers basketball and learns more about his family's past.