Shoot Out

From #1 New York Times bestseller Mike Lupica! What happens when a star player ends up on the worst team? He either learns to lose or he stops playing the game he loves. These are the choices facing Jake, who has gone from champion to last place, testing his sportsmanship every time his soccer team gets waxed. But it's his teammate Kevin who shows Jake that being a good captain means scoring and assisting off the field as much as being the star player on it.

The idea for Shoot-out at Jasper Creek came from a story circulated in my grandmothers neighborhood when I was a child. As the story goes, a thirty-something mystery man who had, somehow, lost a good deal of his face, walked around the back roads of the area at night, talking to himself and his dog. His looks were shocking. His face and neck were bright red with waves of scaly scar tissue buckling it in all directions. His looks frightened children to the point that they were afraid to wander away from their yards without their mother or father. Some said that if he caught children alone he beat them with his flashlight. Of course it never really happened. Although the man was never actually seen by any of the local residents, the folk tale persisted. It is not difficult to imagine that many tales had sprung up about how the mans injuries came about. For some unexplained reason, one man thought he had been a former pirate. One of the tales often repeated was that he was homosexual and his lover had accused him of being untrue and had shot him, maiming him for life. I have no idea how that story came about, or whether there was even a grain of truth to it. Actually, I doubt that the man ever existed. Novels come about for various reasons. The tales have haunted my thoughts through the years. It was time to bring the mystery man to life. Shoot-out At Jasper Creek is my version of the story. Im a lover of Western lore, and I live in the West, so I decided to put the story in context by placing it in the country I know the best with realistic western characters and their local speech habits. Novels come about for various reasons. Shoot-out At Jasper Creek is my way of explaining the folk tale about my grandmothers mystery neighbor who, whether he actually existed in the real world or not, was very real to a community of folks who had a lot of questions, but none of the answers. I dont have them either, but I found myself plotting.

A haunting crime story about the broken characters inhabiting yesterday's Brooklyn, this is the new novel from modern master of neo-noir William Boyle. An explosive crime drama, Shoot the Moonlight Out evokes a mystical Brooklyn where the sidewalks are cracked, where Virgin Mary statues tilt in fenced front yards, and where smudges of moonlight reflect in puddles even on the blackest nights. Southern Brooklyn, July 1996. Fire hydrants are open and spraying water on the sizzling blacktop. Punk kids have to make their own fun. Bobby Santovasco and his pal Zeke like to throw rocks at cars getting off the Belt Parkway. They think it’s dumb and harmless until it’s too late to think otherwise. Then there’s Jack Cornacchia, a widower who lives with his high school age daughter Amelia and reads meters for Con Ed but also has a secret life as a vigilante, righting neighborhood wrongs through acts of violence. A simple mission to strong-arm a Bay Ridge con man, Max Berry, leads him to cross paths with a tragedy that hits close to home. Fast forward five years: June 2001. The summer before New York City and the world changed for good. Charlie French is a low-level gangster-wannabe trying to make a name for himself. When he stumbles onto a bowling alley locker stuffed with a bag full of cash, he brings it to his only pal, Max Berry, for safekeeping while he cleans up the mess surrounding it. Bobby Santovasco, with no real future mapped out—and the big sin of his past shining brightly in his rearview mirror—has taken a job working as an errand boy for Max Berry. On a recruiting run for Max’s Ponzi scheme, Bobby meets Francesca Clarke, born in the neighborhood but an outsider nonetheless. They hit it off. Bobby gets the idea to knock off Max’s safe so he and Francesca can escape Brooklyn forever. Little does he know what Charlie French has stashed there. Meanwhile, Bobby’s former stepsister, Lily Murphy, is back home in the neighborhood after college, teaching a writing class in the basement of St. Mary's church. She's also being stalked by her college boyfriend. One of her students is Jack Cornacchia. When she opens up to him about her stalker, Jack decides to take matters into his own hands. A riveting portrait of lives crashing together at the turn of the century, Shoot the Moonlight Out is tragic and tender and funny and strange. A sense of loss is palpable—what has been lost and what will be lost—and Boyle’s characters face down old ghosts with grim determination, as ripples of consequence radiate in dangerous directions.

Hollywood thrives on shoot outs - that series of stand-offs, skirmishes and power struggles that mark every stage of the film-making process - be it a director insisting on final cut, a star demanding a bigger trailer, or a grip with a gripe. Shoot Out is about how movies are made - from the first pitch to the final cut. For film buffs, aspiring film-makers, students and anyone else intrigued by the inner workings of Hollywood, this is the quintessential take on the how, who, what and why of the film business. 'Packed with insider gossip and some astonishing revelations about the incompetence and self-indulgence that goes on, this is a truly engrossing read. Yet to the authors' credit, none of their stories smack of vindictiveness, whilst the snappy prose ensures that the pages skip by in an entertaining blur. In fact it could be said that this Shoot Out scores a bulls-eye!' Film Review (Book of the Month)

Berk always plays goalie for his soccer team. But when a new kid, Ryan, moves to town, Berk has to play an unfamiliar position. Ryan may have incredible talent, but he's also wildly unpredictable. Can the team survive the season?

A little over one hundred years after the legendary shootout at the OK Corral, a radical South Chicago preacher named Frances Thomas moved to Miracle Valley, Arizona. She brought not only her congregation, but also a dangerous cocktail of fanaticism, faith healing, bigotry, and dynamite. Believing that God had called her to take over Miracle Valley, Pastor Thomas and her cult of followers set out to do just that -- with explosive results.

A revisionist history of the Old West battle challenges popular depictions of such figures as the Earps and Doc Holliday, tracing the influence of a love triangle, renegade Apaches, and the citizens of Tombstone.

February 28, 1997. Early morning. Larry Phillips, Jr. and Emil Matasareanu were on their way to the North Hollywood Bank of America branch. In the trunk of their 1987 Chevrolet Celebrity, more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition, and five rifles, including 2 converted automated Norinco Type 56 S rifles. Their plan was simple: enter the bank, scare bank employees and customers, neutralize as need be the security guards, break the volt, steal the money, exit 8 minutes later, get away, and then celebrate. Their plan would turn for the worst, to the most violent 44-minute long shootout in modern American police history...