Stephen Panus’s novel, The Circles We Carry, is a heart-wrenching and profoundly thoughtful story of a family’s unexpected, deep loss and their harrowing journey through grief in search of a way forward. Jesse Brennan is 17, a junior in Naperville High School in Illinois. He...

Soccer to the Max by Bibi Belford centers on Sandburg Zaproski, an eleven-year-old fifth-grader who is crushed when his dream summer trip to his grandparents’ Texas ranch is canceled. His sister Millay needs medical checkups, so his parents send him to the Grand Premier Youth...

Hop Fight by S. Pluck, P. MacCruiskeen, and F. T. Marquardt is an outlandish, absurdist fiction guide masquerading as an official sports rulebook. The authors detail a high-contact, equipment-free sport in which opponents must stand on a single chosen foot and use brute force to...

In Tatsuro Tanigami’s Digital Golf Club, Japan’s late-1980s golf boom creates Hozan Country Club on a mountain once considered sacred. After a fatal accident involving a lost ball, the course is linked to a problem that follows golfers for decades. Years later, Tetsuo Kurihara, manager...

Tales from the Diving Board by Linda G. Eldredge, EdD, is a story of a young girl who dreamed of swimming like a mermaid but found herself freezing after watching kids leap off the diving board at her local pool. When she befriends Delia, a...

Green by Chuck LeGrande follows a quiet teen named Jamie, who flees his home in Queens after a confrontation with his father, carrying nothing but a hidden draft board letter and a book of drawings. His aimless wandering brings him to the rough edges of...

In Andra Douglas's Changing Cadence, Christine Davis built the New York Sharks women’s football team after discovering that few opportunities existed for women who wanted to play tackle football at a serious level. Nearly twenty years later, she prepares for the final season under her...

The Whooping Falls Warriors, a bush league team, had had a terrible season yet again and were glad it was over. Chad Smith, a pitcher for the Warriors who was designated the losing pitcher in the last game, is not happy about being cut from...

In Is That DiMaggio? by Nick Brigeman, New York middle school student Dave spends his afternoons collecting baseball memorabilia at Triple Crown Trinkets, a neighborhood shop run by former Montreal Expos player Lenny Johnson. After purchasing a rare 1941 Joe DiMaggio baseball card, Dave becomes...

In Henry B. Zimmer’s Designated Hitter, middle-aged Jack Colt is recording his life story, yet an unexpected change in his eyesight alters the direction of that account. After cataract surgery leaves him able to see fine details at extreme distances, he recognizes that he can...