Comeback Season

In 2007, at the age of twelve, Perron bought a set of Topps baseball cards featuring several players from the Negro Leagues. He started writing letters to former Negro League players asking for their autographs and a few words about their careers. The players responded with detailed stories about their glory days on the field, and the racism they faced, including run-ins with the KKK. The letters turned into phone calls, and in these conversations many of the players revealed that they had fallen out of touch with their former teammates. Perron and a small group of fellow researchers organized the first annual Negro League Players Reunion in Birmingham, Alabama in 2010. This is the story of his mission to help many players get pension money that they were owed from Major League Baseball-- and to get a Negro League museum opened in Birmingham, stocked with memorabilia. -- adapted from jacket

High school freshman Ryan Walsh, a Chicago Cubs fan, meets Nick when they both skip school on opening day, and their blossoming relationship becomes difficult for Ryan when she discovers that Nick is seriously ill and she again feels the pain of losing her father five years earlier.

In Comeback Season, Cathy Day, author of the highly praised novel The Circus in Winter, tells the heartwarming story of how she got back in the game of love -- thanks to her favorite football team, the Indianapolis Colts. In 2005, Day, an Indiana native, moves to Pittsburgh to start her dream job. She's thirty-seven, a college professor, an acclaimed writer -- and still single. Psyching herself up, she thinks, "This is the year for the Colts and for me." Instead, both Day and quarterback Peyton Manning face heartbreaking end-of-season losses: the man in her life decides to punt, and the Colts fall to the Pittsburgh Steelers, the eventual Super Bowl champs. Her blue heart broken, Day vows that if the Colts can come back in 2006 and try again, so can she. Inspired by Manning's legendary perfectionism, Day spends the off-season "in training." She gets in shape, imagining that she's Rocky Balboa running through the Philadelphia streets to the tune of "Gonna Fly Now." She quits smoking. She reads dating primers. She watches Sex and the City. She takes notes. She asks everyone she knows, "Um, do you know any men my age who aren't married?" Come preseason, Day reluctantly joins an online dating service and goes on practice dates while the Colts play practice games. Indy goes 1-4 in the preseason, which is better than Day's record of 0-4. Lonely and dejected, Day returns home to watch Colts games with her family, who are full of well-intentioned relationship advice -- much of it bad. The 2006 season finally arrives. Each week that fall, the Colts battle a new adversary and Day faces her enemies: her own romanticism, indecisive men, and her biggest foe, the singles industry. Friends and family deliver impassioned pep talks but can only watch anxiously from the sidelines as Day marches bravely into bars and coffee shops to meet perfect strangers. On the way to the Super Bowl, she discovers that the key to winning -- in both love and football -- exists somewhere between Trying Everything and Letting Go. Honest, touching, and frequently hilarious, Comeback Season tells a timeless story about our need to feel connected to people and to places. This year-long chronicle of one woman's journey will resonate with anyone who's ever looked for love...fumbled...recovered! and kept charging down the field.

In Comeback Season, Cathy Day, author of the highly praised novel The Circus in Winter, tells the heartwarming story of how she got back in the game of love -- thanks to her favorite football team, the Indianapolis Colts. In 2005, Day, an Indiana native, moves to Pittsburgh to start her dream job. She's thirty-seven, a college professor, an acclaimed writer -- and still single. Psyching herself up, she thinks, "This is the year for the Colts and for me." Instead, both Day and quarterback Peyton Manning face heartbreaking end-of-season losses: the man in her life decides to punt, and the Colts fall to the Pittsburgh Steelers, the eventual Super Bowl champs. Her blue heart broken, Day vows that if the Colts can come back in 2006 and try again, so can she. Inspired by Manning's legendary perfectionism, Day spends the off-season "in training." She gets in shape, imagining that she's Rocky Balboa running through the Philadelphia streets to the tune of "Gonna Fly Now." She quits smoking. She reads dating primers. She watches Sex and the City. She takes notes. She asks everyone she knows, "Um, do you know any men my age who aren't married?" Come preseason, Day reluctantly joins an online dating service and goes on practice dates while the Colts play practice games. Indy goes 1-4 in the preseason, which is better than Day's record of 0-4. Lonely and dejected, Day returns home to watch Colts games with her family, who are full of well-intentioned relationship advice -- much of it bad. The 2006 season finally arrives. Each week that fall, the Colts battle a new adversary and Day faces her enemies: her own romanticism, indecisive men, and her biggest foe, the singles industry. Friends and family deliver impassioned pep talks but can only watch anxiously from the sidelines as Day marches bravely into bars and coffee shops to meet perfect strangers. On the way to the Super Bowl, she discovers that the key to winning -- in both love and football -- exists somewhere between Trying Everything and Letting Go. Honest, touching, and frequently hilarious, Comeback Season tells a timeless story about our need to feel connected to people and to places. This year-long chronicle of one woman's journey will resonate with anyone who's ever looked for love...fumbled...recovered! and kept charging down the field.

Over a half century, a small Indiana town hosts a circus troupe during the off-seasons in linked stories “as graceful as any acrobat’s high-wire act” (San Francisco Chronicle). A Story Prize Finalist From 1884 to 1939, the Great Porter Circus made the unlikely choice to winter in an Indiana town called Lima, a place that feels as classic as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and as wondrous as a first trip to the Big Top. In Lima, an elephant can change the course of a man's life—or the manner of his death. Jennie Dixianna entices men with her dazzling Spin of Death and keeps them in line with secrets locked in a cedar box. The lonely wife of the show’s manager has each room of her house painted like a sideshow banner, indulging her desperate passion for a young painter. And a former clown seeks consolation from his loveless marriage in his post-circus job at Clown Alley Cleaners. In this collection of linked stories spanning decades, Cathy Day follows the circus people into their everyday lives and brings the greatest show on earth to the page. “[An] exquisite story collection.” —The Washington Post “Often funny, always graceful, and rich with a mix of historical and imaginative detail.” —Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried “Sublimely imaginative and affecting.” —The Boston Globe

A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK! • An empowering, behind-the-scenes novel of a young Hollywood actress and the dark secret she’s ready to confront. One of Summer 2020’s Most Anticipated Novels Marie Claire, Entertainment Weekly, Oprah magazine, Bustle, E! Online, Popsugar, Goodreads, Today Show online, New York Post, Betches, Better Homes & Gardens, HelloGiggles, Bad on Paper podcast, The Stripe, Shondaland, HuffPost, CNN.com, Mashable “Beautifully written and compulsively readable…At its core, this book is about redemption, grace, and pain.” —Jenna Bush Hager “A novel so full-blooded, so humane, that the pages feel almost warm to the touch. A clarifying, purifying chronicle of a promising young woman gone astray and the story of her comeback. Grace Turner can do it. You can do it, too.” —A.J. Finn Grace Turner was one movie away from Hollywood’s A-List. So no one understood why, at the height of her career and on the eve of her first Golden Globe nomination, she disappeared. Now, one year later, Grace is back in Los Angeles and ready to reclaim her life on her own terms. When Grace is asked to present a lifetime achievement award to director Able Yorke—the man who controlled her every move for eight years—she knows there’s only one way she’ll be free of the secret that’s already taken so much from her. The Comeback is a moving and provocative story of justice—a true page-turner about a young woman finding the strength and power of her voice.

Brett Carter is a hotshot on his basketball team, the Wildcats—or at least he was. After missing an easy layup shot at the buzzer in an important game, he feels like a total loser. But things get worse. At his best friend’s birthday party at a rock climbing center, Brett freezes on the wall. Then he blows an easy question in the American history bee at school. He is losing his confidence fast, both on and off the court—and the championship game is coming up. Can Brett overcome his fears and play like a “winner” again?

Lance Armstrong is a seven-time winner of the Tour de France and fulltime cancer fighter. He oversees the Lance Armstrong Foundation, a nonprofit organization that assists cancer patients around the world with managing and surviving the disease. He won the first of his record-setting seven Tour de France wins after surviving a nearly fatal bout with testicular cancer. In 2008, he was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People. He lives in Austin, Texas.

One Last Shot gives Jordan fans the inside scoop they're looking for on basketball's greatest legend, with exclusive interviews from NBA executives, players, and coaches. Mitchell Krugel uses his fifteen years of following Michael Jordan's every move to explain why the man who left the game as The Greatest Player of All Time would risk his unparalleled legend to play again. After delivering the Chicago Bulls their sixth championship in 1998 by pulling off what became known as the greatest money shot in the history of the NBA, Michael believed he still had much of that Greatest-Player-Of-All-Time left in his game. But he felt that retirement was forced on him in 1999, and he left the game craving more doses of fifty-point binges, winner-take-all confrontations, and repeated nights of reminding fans they just saw the greatest player ever. One Last Shot not only explains why Michael Jordan came back to the court but also looks at his transition from Wizards executive to player, his struggle to join a team that had grown up with his posters on their walls, and his glories and setbacks in a Wizards season chock full of both struggles and surprises. Krugel also details the star-laden workouts Michael designed in the summer of 2001 to get his game back into shape. This look at Michael Jordan, circa 2001-2002, shows how much basketball had changed since his last coming and how much it hadn't, and how his drive pushed him to the verge of a crippling knee injury all in the pursuit of winning. And for six weeks he did make it back. He made the shots. He made good on his mission to teach the Wizards how to be winners, to teach talented teammate Richard Hamilton to be a shooting star, and to whip Kwame Brown, the high school kid he made the first-ever first pick in the NBA draft, into a man. And he did the things that only a man of legend could do. Krugel analyzes both the man and the legend to trace how the First Coming led to a Second and to a Third, and he chronicles the season that defines Michael Jordan as a man who will forever be playing for one last shot.

Have you ever longed for a comeback? We all know what it feels like to have life disappoint us and not work out as we’d hoped. We all know what it’s like to long for something different, something better, something more. The Comeback celebrates new beginnings. It offers encouragement and perspective, and it’s for you if you feel frustrated or confused, if you’re sorrowing or in pain, if you’ve made mistakes or are grieving, if you’re disappointed or feel as though life doesn’t make sense. The good news is that God is in the business of giving fresh starts to people. He gives hope to the hopeless. Direction to the directionless. Help to those who need help. God is always good, all the time, and God’s plans will always prevail, even when our plans don’t. God already knows what the solutions are. No matter what kind of disappointment or grief or pain or trouble or heartache you encounter, God always offers a new beginning, a change of heart, or a powerful spiritual turnaround. God offers the way forward, and his pathways are always good. Your current circumstances will not get the final say in your life. God is the God of the comeback, no matter what kind of challenge you’re facing. And your story can become a great comeback story too.