By Marjorie Preston
“The New York Game”
By Kevin Baker
Canary Street Press
Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball, and Cooperstown is not the home of America’s pastime. In this encyclopedic and vastly entertaining history, Kevin Baker dispels the myths and misperceptions about baseball, and tracks the evolution of both the sport and its birthplace, the gritty boroughs of New York City.
Here you’ll meet the true originator of the modern game, “Doc” Adams of the New York Knickerbockers, as well as the first “natural” to throw a curveball, James Creighton of the Brooklyn Niagaras. You’ll follow an assortment of barnstorming teams who crisscrossed a young nation, and discover how the first leagues were formed. You’ll learn about heroes like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Willie Mays, and anti-heroes like Shoeless Joe Jackson and the 1919 Chicago Black Sox.
“The New York Game” is everything you ever wanted to know about the boys of summer, and a total home run.
“The Day Tripper”
By James Goodhand
Mira
After a rough childhood, Alex Dean finally has a chance at happiness with his new girlfriend, Holly. Then he encounters a childhood nemesis, who brutally beats him and throws him into the Thames River.
When he regains consciousness, Alex realizes the trauma has thrown him out of chronological order in his own life. One day, it’s 1995, and he’s a 20-something musician. The next, it’s 2010, and he’s a 35-year-old addict. Then he’s 33. Then 21. Then 38. Then 24.
In this chaotic existence, he meets a Dr. Defrates, who somehow knows what is happening to him, and urges him to unravel the mystery. Alex begins to slowly recognize the effect of each of his actions, for good and ill, on the rest of his life and the people in it.
Like the central characters in other time-bending fables—like “A Christmas Carol,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and “Groundhog Day”—Alex reluctantly accepts that there are lessons to be learned in his misfortune.
At first, “The Day Tripper” can be hard going, as the reader learns the rhythm of Alex’s strange new life (and there’s also lots of mystifying British slang). But stick with it, for the literal ride of a lifetime.
“The Museum of Lost Quilts”
By Jennifer Chiaverini
William Morrow
Summer Sullivan is this-close to finishing her master’s thesis in women’s history, putting her one step closer to a career in education. She is shattered when a doctoral candidate beats her to the punch, with a dissertation on the same topic that renders Summer’s work all but irrelevant.
Uncertain about her future, she heads home to Elm Creek Manor, the rural artists’ retreat she helped to found. Here, in the home of Elm Creek Quilters, she finds consolation among friends, teachers, and an attractive library researcher. She also finds welcome distraction in a fundraiser they are planning to save a historic landmark.
As she curates an exhibit of historic quilts, Summer discovers evidence of past injustice and corruption in the community—information that threatens the very building she is trying to save.
“The Museum of Lost Quilts,” part of the Elm Creek Quilt Series, is an engaging saga about the power of the past—even the tragic past—to create a greater future.
“The Wake-Up Call”
By Beth O’Leary
Berkley Romance
Izzy Jenkins and Lucas da Silva have a love-hate relationship.
Both work the front desk at the Forest Manor Hotel in the English countryside. Izzy has always had a crush on Lucas, who is “offensively handsome,” but much too serious. Lucas has always been attracted to free-spirited Izzy, but is convinced she dislikes him.
Now, with the inn literally falling down around their ears, both could lose their positions and the workplace that has become their home.
In a last-gasp bid save the hotel, the innkeepers start selling off remnants of Forest Manor’s history: antique furniture, art, and even unclaimed items from the lost and found, including a handful of potentially valuable rings. Izzy and Lucas must work side by side on this campaign, which soon becomes a competition.
That’s the premise of this amusing little romance. Izzy and Lucas spend most of the book growling at or trying to one-up each other, all the while denying the chemistry between them. “The Wake-Up Call” is the perfect companion for your next beach day.
“Bitter Crop”
By Paul Alexander
Knopf
Jazz singer Billie Holiday was born to a teenage single mom, grew up in Baltimore’s red light district, and eventually worked alongside her mother in a Harlem bordello. Her ticket out was that voice: a sinuous sound unlike any other, and a pristine, unfussy delivery.
Here’s the true story of Billie’s final year, before complications of cirrhosis claimed her at just 44. To the end, Lady Day continued to sing, but only outside New York (her criminal record denied her a cabaret card there). She continued to record, but in a voice ravaged by years of alcoholism. And she continued to battle authorities, who arrested her for drug possession even as she lay in the hospital.
This account of Billie’s final act also traces her early career and associations with the jazz greats of her time, like Louis Armstrong, Glenn Miller, Teddy Wilson, Frank Sinatra, and her good friend Lester Young.
With a novelistic quality that makes it all the more captivating, “Bitter Crop” illustrates a life that was tragic in some ways, triumphant in others, and by any measure, all too brief.
Marjorie Preston is a business writer, editor, ghostwriter and compulsive reader, who gobbles up books like potato chips. For more information (and more book reviews), visit marjorieprestonwriting.com.
