Beloved, award-winning author Carl Deuker serves up another fast-paced sports novel—this one about basketball and friendship.
Nate plays soccer, but he doesn’t love it. He plays because it’s what his family expects.
Then Lucas Cawley moves in across the street. Lucas isn’t like any of Nate’s sports friends—he’s poor, his parents are mostly absent, and he’s devoted to his sister, Megan, who has a learning disability. Lucas may be an outcast at school, but he and Nate find common ground in their fierce games of one-on-one basketball.
It’s not long before Nate realizes that basketball is his sport. But Nate has an ax to grind with star players Colin and Bo, who have disrespected him for years. Nate believes that outplaying those two is the most important thing . . . until he learns that life is about more than getting ready for the next game.
Nick Abbott and Trent Dawson have nothing in common but basketball. Or so it seems. But as the basketball season progresses, their lives become unexpectedly intertwined. In this story of an unlikely bond, award-winning author Carl Deuker explores that dark and confusing place between loneliness and friendship, between faithfulness and betrayal. Filled with gripping game play, the novel will leave readers wondering how much they themselves would reach out to a kid like Trent.
But the weather-beaten sailboat Chance Taylor and his father call home is thirty years old and hasn’t sailed in years. One step from both homelessness and hunger, Chance worries about things other kids his age never give a thought: Where will the money come for the electricity bill, grocery bill, and moorage fees? So when a new job falls his way, he jumps at the opportunity. He knows how much he will earn; what he doesn’t know is how much he will pay.
Nick Abbott and Trent Dawson have nothing in common but basketball. Or so it seems. But as the basketball season progresses, their lives become unexpectedly intertwined. In this story of an unlikely bond, award-winning author Carl Deuker explores that dark and confusing place between loneliness and friendship, between faithfulness and betrayal. Filled with gripping game play, the novel will leave readers wondering how much they themselves would reach out to a kid like Trent.
But the weather-beaten sailboat Chance Taylor and his father call home is thirty years old and hasn’t sailed in years. One step from both homelessness and hunger, Chance worries about things other kids his age never give a thought: Where will the money come for the electricity bill, grocery bill, and moorage fees? So when a new job falls his way, he jumps at the opportunity. He knows how much he will earn; what he doesn’t know is how much he will pay.
I HELD THE BALL GENTLY, AS IF IT WERE A SMALL BIRD AND I WAS FEELING FOR ITS TINY, BEATING HEART.
Laz Weathers wants out of Jet City, the trailer park in Seattle where he lives. When he gets an offer to
move in with a host family and pitch for a high-profile high school baseball team, he knows it is his last
chance to impress major-league scouts and start down the road to becoming a league player.
But playing for the rich kids across town would mean leaving behind not only his mother, but also
his brother, Antonio, who is on the verge of being sucked into the black hole that is Jet Citys drug
world. How can Laz choose between being the star pitcher he has always dreamed of becoming and the
team player his family needs?
High school senior point guard Jonas Dolan is on the fast track to a basketball career until an unthinkable choice puts his future on the line.
Levi was simple, like a child. It was the best thing about him, and it was the worst, too.
When high school senior Jonas moves to Seattle, he is glad to meet Levi, a nice, soft-spoken guy and fellow basketball player. Suspense builds like a slow drumbeat as readers start to smell a rat in Ryan Hartwell, a charismatic basketball coach and sexual predator. When Levi reluctantly tells Jonas that Hartwell abused him, Jonas has to decide whether he should risk his future career to report the coach.
Pitch-perfect basketball plays, well-developed characters, and fine storytelling make this heartbreaking psychological sports novel a slam dunk.
“The novel includes descriptions of many basketball plays and strategies, which should make this book particularly appealing to fans of the game…Once Jonas (and readers) figure out what’s going on with Coach Hartwell, the pace quickens, and Jonas’s struggle to do the right thing intensifies.”—Publishers Weekly
High school senior point guard Jonas Dolan is on the fast track to a basketball career until an unthinkable choice puts his future on the line.
Levi was simple, like a child. It was the best thing about him, and it was the worst, too.
When high school senior Jonas moves to Seattle, he is glad to meet Levi, a nice, soft-spoken guy and fellow basketball player. Suspense builds like a slow drumbeat as readers start to smell a rat in Ryan Hartwell, a charismatic basketball coach and sexual predator. When Levi reluctantly tells Jonas that Hartwell abused him, Jonas has to decide whether he should risk his future career to report the coach.
Pitch-perfect basketball plays, well-developed characters, and fine storytelling make this heartbreaking psychological sports novel a slam dunk.
Running back Mick Johnson has dreams: dreams of cutting back, finding the hole, breaking in to the open, and running free with nothing but green grass ahead. He has dreams of winning and of being the best. But football is a cruel sport. It requires power, grace, speed, quickness, and knowledge of the game. It takes luck, too. One crazy bounce can turn a likely victory into sudden defeat. What elite athlete wouldn’t look for an edge? A way to make him bigger, stronger, faster?
This novel explores the dark corners of the heart of a young football player as he struggles for success under the always glaring—and often unforgiving—stadium lights.
“A solid sports tale with a valuable message.”—Kliatt
Through the eyes of a distinctly non-athletic protagonist-a fat high school journalist named Mitch-veteran sports novelist Deuker reveals the surprising truth behind a mysterious football player named Angel. When Angel shows up Lincoln High, he seems to have no past-or at least not one he is willing to discuss. Though Mitch gets a glimpse of Angel's incredible talent off the field, Angel rarely allows himself to shine on the field. Is he an undercover cop, wonders Mitch? Or an ineligible player? In pursuit of a killer story, Mitch decides to find out just who this player is and what he's done. In the end, the truth surprises everyone.
