Monroe Free Library

In this novel, the careers of a golden boy rookie hitter for the Cubs and a hard-hitting Mets pitcher take very different paths. The baseball is thrilling, but it is what happens off the field that makes this story a classic.

In 1947, as Jackie Robinson breaks the major league baseball color barrier by playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Joseph Burke, a World War II veteran and survivor of Guadalcanal, is hired by Dodgers manager Branch Rickey to be Robinson's bodyguard.

Every Saturday night, best friends and neighbors Zada, Jen, Tish, and Alicia heat up their quaint little cul-de-sac with the infamous Housewives Fantasy Club. Everyone has a secret fantasy to share. Some have better ones to hide.
Imagine! Retired baseball star Jake "The Rake" Sims living here—in the flesh! Well, he won't find Alicia Greene an easy conquest (she does not do bad boys). So what if his chiseled pecs and grand slam physique—displayed...

The classical novel (and basis for the acclaimed film starring Robert Redford) now in a new edition
Introduction by Kevin Baker
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

...

A disastrous error on the field sends five lives into a tailspin in this award-nominated tale about love, life, and baseball. At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended. Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight,...

"Despite needing a heart transplant and against the advice of her doctor, Mary Catherine moves to Uganda to work at a new orphanage. Whatever time she has left, Mary Catherine wants to spend it helping children--especially since there will be no children of her own. The only problem is Major League Baseball player Marcus Dillinger, the man she never meant to fall in love with. Neither Marcus nor Mary Catherine's other friends--Tyler Ames and Sami...

"Noah and his best friend Walt want to become cool, make the baseball team, and win over Sam, the girl Noah has loved for years. When Noah finds old love letters, Walt hatches a plan to woo Sam. But as Noah's love life and Walt's baseball career begin, the letters alter everything"--

"A successful but unhappy baseball player finds companionship in the pet walrus he adopts but is soon faced with the great challenge of balancing his responsibilities and maintaining the costly upkeep of his new friend"--

On a beautiful October morning in rural Maine, a homicide investigator from the state police pulls into the hard-luck town of Copper Falls. The local junkyard is burning, and the town pariah Lizzie Oullette is dead--with her husband, Dwayne, nowhere to be found. As scandal ripples through the community, Detective Ian Bird's inquiries unexpectedly lead him away from small-town Maine to a swank city townhouse several hours south. Adrienne Richards,...

Ordered by the team's owner to give a bunch of interviews to reporter Mark Bailey, baseball shortstop, Eddie O'Leary, during the 1960 season, slowly gives in to the attraction between them, and when it's just them against the world, they must decide if that's enough.