Ron Seybold

Not as clear-eyed and direct as the movie, but Pressfield offers an in-story tale of why the Bhagavad Gita applies to the world of sport, and especially golf. Like Shoeless Joe, it directs you to the inner life and emotional core of a sport, in this case golf. One of the best books on golf out there.

A book that lives up to the vision of the movie. (It can be harder than it looks; the reference movie is Field of Dreams). There's a soul inside baseball, and this book captures it. It's even worth moving through the reflective parts of the story to embrace its power as a whole.

One of the best books for keeping your keys or your pen moving. Thoughtful, gentle and honest.

An essential for every writer.

Make this a significant part of your writing toolkit. Worth the work to use in building your writing skills. There's a reason this has a 25th anniversary edition. It remains relevant.

One of the greatest books I've ever read. Like anybody needs to say that about this. A book so good that its author didn't need to write one single book more.

Clumsy, this one. Not especially funny, either, unless you bring along some simmering disdain for male writers. Describing herself as not a writer pretty well fits this effort. When American publishing needs this kind of book, it's really trolling. But that's not the point, is it? I was wondering if there would be anything in here to help a writer create a genuine and benevolent male character. Way too much screed for any compassionate reader. Seems to be all about getting even. It got confusing, too, once I learned there's a very earnest and noble comedy show, just now opened to support breast cancer survivors, with the very same name. Definitely a slow day at the publisher's house when the title got kicked around.

There's plenty of variety in this story collection, one of the marks of a pro storyteller. From a time travel assassin to a robot boyfriend to the ghost of grandfather abducted by aliens, Asthana shows great range in here. There's a classic Western in “The Visitor” with its main character that invites all of our biases from the genre before it reveals the betrayal that always comes on the frontier. I was surprised at the humanism around every story. Monsters and Little Green Men kept me guessing about how each story would unfold. Asthana's got a three-novel series up here (Final Wars) on Amazon. This collection shows he's got a rich set of more stories left to tell.

When I read Deja Vu, it was easy to see why it's an award winner. A fetching heroine, a hero with a past he's trying to outrun, and the fates that try to bring them back together after their time long ago as high school sweethearts. The writing crackles with a bounce that puts humor into every encounter. Death by car wash eliminates one character. While the story mounts, though, it turns to the essentials of our lives: love that lasts, and finding the kind that fits for our soul.

Deja Vu isn't glib or filled with formula, but it's a romance award winner. The author deserves the attention he's won with his Ben Franklin prize. This is the all so rare romance written by a man, but with a tender take on what women want for themselves in love. Highly recommended.

A masterwork of suspense and love and history

The first book is the best, sometimes for authors. It seems to be true here. I read The Good German from Kanon first and loved it. This is even richer, full of love and faith and the dire consequence of a mission that would change the world. The language of the writing is a set of gems, too. He's the master of works from the 40s, bursting with history and the small but apt detail.

Progressive Era women's fiction is becoming a mainstay, but Cartier's Hope stands out among a growing field of titles. The book pulls you in with its elaborate attention to period detail. Soon enough, you find yourself rooting for our heroine, a young woman making her way back from a well-intentioned tragedy to retake her place in journalism, one of the few careers open to women of that era.

Yes, there is the Hope Diamond, and its whereabouts get shady amid a plot with plenty of family and character secrets. What is surprising is the layers of complications that lead the reader through the world's injustices, leading to a shocking bit of history that propels our heroine into action.

The book runs on beyond a reasonable finish to its story, in large part to give us all the ending we secretly crave where love and rebellion intersect. The author's research is sound, and sometimes striking in its depth. Leading a life of pursuing liberty can be thrilling to watch.

This is a powerful and exhaustive report from the pitchers who made hurling an art. Kepner calls on his deep background in sportswriting to talk with hundreds of players about the 10 essential pitches. With all of the changes in baseball's pitching strategies and practices, reading K is essential to knowing what's at the heart of the success of a staff. It's a dictionary and thesaurus of the language that makes those 108 stitches spin their way into the hearts of fans of all ages.