Queen Of The Court

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Madeleine Blais, the dramatic and colorful story of legendary tennis star and international celebrity, Alice Marble In August 1939, Alice Marble graced the cover of Life magazine, photographed by the famed Alfred Eisenstaedt. She was a glamorous worldwide celebrity, having that year won singles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles tennis titles at both Wimbledon and the US Open, then an unprecedented feat. Yet today one of America’s greatest female athletes and most charismatic characters is largely forgotten. Queen of the Court places her back on center stage. Born in 1913, Marble grew up in San Francisco; her favorite sport, baseball. Given a tennis racket at age 13, she took to the sport immediately, rising to the top with a powerful, aggressive serve-and-volley style unseen in women’s tennis. A champion at the height of her fame in the late 1930s, she also designed a clothing line in the off-season and sang as a performer in the Sert Room of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York to rave reviews. World War II derailed her amateur tennis career, but her life off the court was, if anything, even more eventful. She wrote a series of short books about famous women. She turned professional and joined a pro tour during the War, entertaining and inspiring soldiers and civilians alike. Ever glamorous and connected, she had a part in the 1952 Tracy and Hepburn movie Pat and Mike, and she played tennis with the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich, and her great friends, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. However, perhaps her greatest legacy lies in her successful efforts, working largely alone, to persuade the all-white US Lawn Tennis Association to change its policy and allow African American star Althea Gibson to compete for the US championship in 1950, thereby breaking tennis’s color barrier. In two memoirs, Marble also showed herself to be an at-times unreliable narrator of her own life, which Madeleine Blais navigates skillfully, especially Marble’s dramatic claims of having been a spy during World War II. In Queen of the Court, the author of the bestselling In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle recaptures a glittering life story.

One of the biggest stars in tennis, Serena Williams has captured every major title. Her 2009 Australian Open championship earned her the number one world ranking for the third time in her illustrious career-and marked only the latest exclamation point in a life well and purposefully lived. As a young girl, Serena began training with an adult-size racquet that was almost as big as she was. Rather than dropping the racquet, Serena saw it as a challenge to overcome - and she has confronted every obstacle on her path to success with the same unflagging spirit. From growing up in the tough, hardscrabble neighborhood of Compton, California, to being trained by her father on public tennis courts littered with broken glass and drug paraphernalia, to becoming the top women's player in the world, Serena has proven to be an inspiration to her legions of fans both young and old. Her accomplishments have not been won without struggle. She has been derailed by injury, criticized for her unorthodox approach to tennis, and was devastated by the tragic shooting of her older sister. Yet somehow Serena always manages to prevail, both on and off the court. She's applied the same strength and determination that helped her to become a champion to her successful pursuits in philanthropy, fashion, television, and film. In this compelling and poignant memoir, Serena takes an empowering look at her extraordinary life and what is still to come.

Ex-stripper Shana Lee Jones thinks she's finally left her disreputable past behind when she convinces her wealthy husband, former outlaw biker Wayne Jones, to bail out bankrupt Belle Vista Country Club. To the horror of its elite members, Shana arrives on the club's historic grounds with a TV crew in tow, and begins filming her very own tennis reality show, Queen of the Court. From day one, the show is an epic disaster for the socially prominent members, especially the "Bitches of Belle Vista," who play on the club's prestigious ladies' tennis team. As the cameras capture humiliating episodes ranging from wardrobe malfunctions to on-court cat fights, team captain Allie Beech becomes desperate to take back "her" club before Queen of the Court ruins her husband's political ambitions. She launches a relentless public campaign to ostracize the sincere but hopelessly tacky Shana, while privately delving into the disappearance of heiress Pippa Edgemoor, whose trust fund could free Belle Vista from the Joneses. However, Allie doesn't realize that her investigation could reveal unsavory secrets long hidden by the privileged and pedigreed denizens of Belle Vista, including her own mother. Shana, meanwhile, discovers that there are parts of your past you just can't outrun, especially in four-inch heels. This is a rollicking, enjoyable novel with an unlikely and audacious heroine, Shana Jones, who takes on country club society with hilarious results. Queen of the Court serves up an entertaining mix of social satire, mystery and just plain fun.

The first book to challenge the conventional wisdom that Sandra Day O'Connor was an influential member of the Rehnquist Court simply by default of her centrist views. Shows that her impact and influence went far beyond the "swing vote," and that it truly was "O'Connor's Court" more so than Rehnquist's.

Kallana wears the wildest clothes of anyone at her suburban Calgary junior high school. Still, it seems it's not enough to get the attention of her freelance photographer father or her non-kid-friendly mother. When her dad signs her up for the basketball team after Kallana is sent home from school for wearing "provocative" clothes, she's mortified: she can't dribble, she can't shoot, and the uniforms are just hideous. But as things get worse at home, basketball practice comes to be a welcome relief, and the self-confidence she learns at the free-throw line helps her prepare for the difficult changes she has to face. Queen of the Court is the touching story of a young girl whose experience of sport helps her cope with unexpected change. [Fry Reading Level - 3.3

A riveting, revealing portrait of tennis champion and global icon Serena Williams that combines biography, cultural criticism, and sports writing to offer “a deep, satisfying meditation” (The New York Times) on the most consequential athlete of her time. There has never been an athlete like Serena Williams. She has dominated women’s tennis for two decades, changed the way the game is played, and—by inspiring Naomi Osaka, Coco Gauff, and others—changed, too, the racial makeup of the pro game. But Williams’s influence has not been confined to the tennis court. As a powerful Black woman who struggled to achieve and sustain success, she has emerged as a cultural icon, figuring in conversations about body image, working mothers, and more. Seeing Serena chronicles Williams’s return to tennis after giving birth to her daughter—from her controversial 2018 US Open final against Naomi Osaka through a 2020 season that unfolded against a backdrop of a pandemic and protests over the killing of Black men and women by the police. Gerald Marzorati, who writes about tennis for The New Yorker, travels to Wimbledon and to Compton, California, where Serena and her sister Venus learned to play. He talks with former women’s tennis greats, sports and cultural commentators—and Serena herself. He observes Williams from courtside, on the red carpet, in fashion magazines, on social media. He sees her and writes about her prismatically—reflecting on her many, many facets. The result is an “enlightening…keen analysis” (The Washington Post) and energetic narrative that illuminates Serena’s singular status as the greatest women’s tennis player of all time and a Black woman with a global presence like no other.