Showing results by author "Mike Lupica" in All Categories

PI Sunny Randall owes a favor. Her landlord and former client, famous novelist Melanie Joan Hall, is being threatened and blackmailed, and it is up to Sunny and her best friend Spike to ensure her protection. But as Sunny looks into the identity of Melanie Joan’s stalker, she learns that much of the author’s past is a product of her amazing imagination, and her loyalty to her old friend is challenged as she searches for the truth.

When you're the smallest kid playing a big man's game, the challenges never stop - especially when your name is Danny Walker. Leading your travel team to the national championship may seem like a dream come true, but for Danny, being at the top just means the competition tries that much harder to knock him off. Now Danny's heading to Right Way basketball camp for the summer, and he knows that with the country's best players in attendance, he's going to need to take his game up a notch if he wants to match up. But it won't be easy.

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.

Twelve-year-old star Little League pitcher Nick Garcia has a dream. Several in fact. He dreams he'll win this season's MVP and the chance to throw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium. He dreams he'll meet his hero, Yankees' pitcher Michael Arroyo. He dreams they'll find a cure for Lupus so he sister won't have to suffer. But mostly, he dreams one day his family can stop living in fear of the government. For one kid, it's almost too much to bear.

When the Brighton Bears suit up on game day, 12-year-old Tommy Gallagher is the toughest kid on the football field. And the bravest. After all, his father Patrick is a Boston firefighter - one of Boston's bravest. Tommy's dad taught him everything he knows about football - and life. Yet even Tommy isn't strong enough for what happens when the sirens ring and, for the first time, they're racing away from the fire. "First man in; last man out" had always been his dad's motto, yet he never said anything about leaving in an ambulance.

12-year-old Charlie is a fantasy football guru. He may be just a bench warmer for his school's football team, but when it comes to knowing and loving the game, he's first-string. He even becomes a celebrity when his podcast gets noticed by a sports radio host, who plays Charlie's fantasy picks for all of Los Angeles to hear. Soon Charlie befriends the elderly owner of the L.A. Bulldogs - a fictional NFL team - and convinces him to take a chance on an aging quarterback.

Jack Callahan is the star of his baseball team and sixth grade is supposed to be his year. Undefeated season. Records shattered. Little League World Series. The works. That is, until he up and quits. Jack's best friend Gus can't understand how Jack could leave a game that means more to them than anything else. But Jack is done. It's a year of change.

This is what happens when the desperate golden-boy owner of the worst pro-basketball team in the world and his equally desperate golden-boy coach do the unthinkable: sign the first woman ever to play in the NBA. Her name is Dee Gerard, the daughter of a New York playground legend and the product of God having an exceptionally good day. A star in Europe, but weary of bad arenas, she retires - until the day a scout for the hapless New York Knights calls his boss: "I found you a point guard who is perfect, except for one thing."

Soccer season is underway, and though Zach and Zoe play on different travel teams, they're on the same team when it comes to solving mysteries. So when a package arrives in the mail addressed to Zach, the twins are surprised to find a soccer jersey identical to the one Zach wears for his team. But Zach's jersey is in his closet - so who does this jersey belong to and why did they send it? It's a soccer secret - and Zach and Zoe are on the case!

There's nothing eight-year-old twins Zach and Zoe Walker love more than playing sports and solving mysteries. And when those two worlds collide...well, it doesn't get any better than that. In their third mystery, Zach and Zoe discover their recess football has been completely deflated, leaving them without a ball to play with. But who's behind it? By searching for clues around the school, Zach and Zoe uncover the truth behind the damaged ball and learn the importance of friendship, inclusion, and being conscious of other people's feelings.

When eight-year-old twins Zach and Zoe find out they'll be joining their dad at the Boston Bruins hockey practice, they can't believe their luck. But upon arrival, the Bruins' star player tells the twins he lost his lucky necklace right before the Stanley Cup final, and just like that, the mystery is on. The twins' search takes them all over the arena and even onto the ice. Will Zach and Zoe find the missing necklace in time for the big game?

Stepping into the ring against light-heavyweight champion Archie Moore, George Plimpton pauses to wonder what ever induced him to become a participatory journalist. Bloodied but unbowed, he holds his own in the bout—and lives to tell in this timeless book on boxing and its devotees, among them Ali, Joe Frazier, Ernest Hemingway, and Norman Mailer.

Gramps is Lucas’s hero, which is second only to the fact that he is also Lucas’s basketball coach. Gramps coached the team to victory in the championships last year, and when he decides to come out of retirement to coach another season, Lucas is thrilled. This season will absolutely be the greatest yet. So when his English teacher challenges the class to write a biography of the person they most admire, Lucas can’t think of anyone he’d rather write about. Except...Gramps is being cagey. He avoids every question Lucas asks, and gets angry every time Lucas brings up his past.

When the twins start a summer basketball league at their local park, they notice the once rundown court is getting freshened up with each passing day. First new nets, then the benches have been completely restored. But who's behind it? Zach and Zoe are on the case!

A lineman with something to prove. A vendetta against a baseball legend. The rise of a real-life NHL all-star. The luckiest grapefruit in sports history. Open up The Sports Pages, the third volume in the Guys Read Library of Great Reading, and you're in for all of this and more. From fiction to nonfiction, from baseball to mixed martial arts and everything in between, these are 10 stories about the rush of victory and the crush of defeat on and off the field. Compiled by kid-lit all-star Jon Scieszka, Guys Read: The Sports Pages is a thrilling collection of brand-new short stories.

There's nothing eight-year-old twins Zach and Zoe Walker love more than playing sports and solving mysteries. And when those two worlds collide...well, it doesn't get any better than that. So when a baseball signed by Zach's favorite major league player suddenly goes missing - the search is on! Luckily, amateur sleuths Zach and Zoe are on the case.

In this sixth installment, Zach and Zoe join the Middletown Elementary lacrosse club. But a day after their first game, a mystery presents itself: The netting on one of the school's lacrosse sticks is torn through. Ms. Moriarty says the equipment is just old and worn, but the twins think it might be something else. They decide to investigate, and when the clues start coming together, they realize solving the mystery is only the first piece of an even bigger surprise.

The beautiful wife of one of the world's richest men comes to Spenser in the hope that he can find out what skeletons lurk in her husband's closet. Though he is a generous philanthropist and loving family man, she is concerned—he has recently become secretive, bordering on paranoid, and she wants Spenser to find out why. As Spenser digs into the billionaire's past, he realizes that the man may have done terrible things to rise to the top—but he also may have had good reason to. What he discovers will cause him to question his own views on morality—and place him in grave danger.