Going Going Gone

Best Books of 2022 —Kirkus Reviews "(A) rousing sports time-travel epic." —Booklife by Publishers Weekly “Riveting…lyrical…Readers will stick with this riotous page-turner to the last out.”—Kirkus (starred review) An earthquake decimates San Francisco’s baseball stadium. Two players and their manager are trapped. With water rising, the trio crawls through a gash in the wall. Naked and penniless, they climb through the muck onto shore. Downtown San Francisco is on fire. They can not find their stadium, or any new buildings, or the parking lot with their fancy cars. No one has a cell phone to call for help. André Velez, the self-absorbed superstar; Johnny Blent, the faithful-to-his-wife rookie infielder; and their baseball-is-life manager, Bucky Martin, have been transported through time into the 1906 earthquake. Can they figure out what happened? Or how to get back to their 21st-century lives? In a world without television cameras, social media, or Sabermetrics, the players make money the only way they know how. But the 1906 they’re inhabiting isn’t one from our history books. Soon, the three find themselves part of an international baseball challenge against the rump remnant of the Confederacy and its all-star team, featuring Walter Johnson, Martín Dihigo, Ty Cobb, and Ty’s murderous, menacing baseball brothers.

THE PAIN AND the Great One are going places! In these new stories the kids are on the go—the Pain needs a trip to the emergency room; the family goes to the mall and not everyone stays together; the kids visit a county fair and want to ride the Super Slide; and a beach outing includes a boogie board. Lots more action and adventure for the dynamic duo who never stay still.

An unforgettable German bestseller about the European refugee crisis: “Erpenbeck will get under your skin” (Washington Post Book World) Go, Went, Gone is the masterful new novel by the acclaimed German writer Jenny Erpenbeck, “one of the most significant German-language novelists of her generation” (The Millions). The novel tells the tale of Richard, a retired classics professor who lives in Berlin. His wife has died, and he lives a routine existence until one day he spies some African refugees staging a hunger strike in Alexanderplatz. Curiosity turns to compassion and an inner transformation, as he visits their shelter, interviews them, and becomes embroiled in their harrowing fates. Go, Went, Gone is a scathing indictment of Western policy toward the European refugee crisis, but also a touching portrait of a man who finds he has more in common with the Africans than he realizes. Exquisitely translated by Susan Bernofsky, Go, Went, Gone addresses one of the most pivotal issues of our time, facing it head-on in a voice that is both nostalgic and frightening.

Originally published as a picture book by Bradbury Press in 1974.

Three middle schoolers travel back in time to the 1950s with the help of a magical library book.