MESSI

Author: Guillem Balague
Publisher: Orion Publishing (March 1, 2014)
ISBN: 9781409146599

On May 1, 2005, 17-year-old Lionel Messi scored his first goal for FC Barcelona, becoming, at the time, the youngest player ever to score in a league match for the Catalan club. Since then, his story has been one of meteoric—and seemingly limitless—success. Now, this compelling and perceptive biography by respected soccer journalist Guillem Balague gets to the heart of the mystery and genius that is Messi. From that first, league-winning season to the present, this chronicle details Messi’s historic feats, analyzing the reasons behind his barely comprehensible success. It examines the integral role he played during the 2008–2009 season, during which Barcelona won the league, the domestic cup, and the Champion’s League, as well as the drive and determination that saw him score an astonishing 91 goals in 2012, becoming—at the age of 25—Barcelona’s all-time top scorer, and win four consecutive FIFA World Player of the Year awards.

This account also examines Messi’s international career, during which, after a slow start, he has become Argentina’s second top scorer of all time. This is the story of one of the finest players to ever grace the sport of soccer, the diminutive Argentine who has been named by Diego Maradona himself as his successor and who always plays with a smile on his face at one of the biggest clubs in the world.

The Escape

Author: David Baldacci 
Publisher: Vision; Reprint edition (August 25, 2015)
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2119-7

It’s a prison unlike any other. Military discipline rules. Its security systems are unmatched. None of its prisoners dream of escaping. They know it’s impossible . . . until now.
John Puller’s older brother, Robert, was convicted of treason and national security crimes. His inexplicable escape from prison makes him the most wanted criminal in the country. Some in the government believe that John Puller represents their best chance at capturing Robert alive, and so Puller must bring in his brother to face justice.
But Puller quickly discovers that his brother is pursued by others who don’t want him to survive. Puller is in turn pushed into an uneasy, fraught partnership with another agent, who may have an agenda of her own.
They dig more deeply into the case together, and Puller finds that not only are her allegiances unclear, but there are troubling details about his brother’s conviction . . . and someone out there doesn’t want the truth to ever come to light. As the nationwide manhunt for Robert grows more urgent, Puller’s masterful skills as an investigator and strengths as a fighter may not be enough to save his brother-or himself.

Breakfast With Jesus

Author: Ivan King 
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (February 23, 2015)
ISBN: 978-1508503682

Breakfast With Jesus is a very spiritual and powerful book. Its messages are time tested and true. This book really made me think; but more importantly, it made me feel. If you are looking for a book that will move you to tears, then look no further than Breakfast With Jesus; a masterful book that will not only inspire you to become a better person, but will also teach you some of life’s greatest lessons. A young man has breakfast with Jesus and discovers the meaning of life. What lessons will he learn? What secrets are going to be revealed? Jump in and you will find out…..

Dept.Of Speculation

Author: Jenny Offill 
Publisher: January 28th 2014 by Knopf
ISBN: 978-0385350815

Dept. of Speculation is a portrait of a marriage. It is also a beguiling rumination on the mysteries of intimacy, trust, faith, knowledge, and the condition of universal shipwreck that unites us all.

Jenny Offill’s heroine, referred to in these pages as simply “the wife,” once exchanged love letters with her husband postmarked Dept. of Speculation, their code name for all the uncertainty that inheres in life and in the strangely fluid confines of a long relationship. As they confront an array of common catastrophes—a colicky baby, a faltering marriage, stalled ambitions—the wife analyzes her predicament, invoking everything from Keats and Kafka to the thought experiments of the Stoics to the lessons of doomed Russian cosmonauts. She muses on the consuming, capacious experience of maternal love, and the near total destruction of the self that ensues from it as she confronts the friction between domestic life and the seductions and demands of art.

With cool precision, in language that shimmers with rage and wit and fierce longing, Jenny Offill has crafted an exquisitely suspenseful love story that has the velocity of a train hurtling through the night at top speed. Exceptionally lean and compact, Dept. of Speculation is a novel to be devoured in a single sitting, though its bracing emotional insights and piercing meditations on despair and love will linger long after the last page.

The Polished Hoe

Author: Austin Clarke
Publisher:  Amistad; First Edition edition (June 17, 2003)
ISBN: 978-0060555658

When Mary-Mathilda, one of the most respected women on the colonized island of Bimshire (also known as Barbados), calls the police to confess to a crime, the result is a shattering all-night vigil. She claims the crime is against Mr. Belfeels, the powerful manager of the sugar plantation that dominates the villagers’ lives and for whom she has worked for more than thirty years as a field laborer, kitchen help, and maid. She was also Mr. Belfeels’s mistress, kept in good financial status in the Great House of the plantation, and the mother of his only son, Wilberforce, a successful doctor, who after living abroad returns to the island.

Set in the period following World War II, The Polished Hoe unravels over the course of twenty-four hours but spans the lifetime of one woman and the collective experience of a society characterized by slavery. Infused with Joycean overtones, this remarkable novel — winner of the 2002 Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize Best Book Award, Canada and Caribbean region; and a bestseller in Canada — evokes the power of memory and the indomitable strength of the human spirit.

Everything I Never Told You

Author: Celeste N.G 
Publisher: Penguin Books; Reprint edition (May 12, 2015)
ISBN: 978-0143127550

“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

Private India: City On Fire

Author: James Patterson 
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; Reprint edition (November 11, 2014)
Series: Jack Morgan Book 4 
ISBN:  978-1455560820 

When Jack Morgan opens the Mumbai branch of Private, the world’s most elite detective agency, he hands the reins to top agent Santosh Wagh. Now, in this teeming metropolis of over thirteen million people where the guilty have everywhere to hide, Santosh goes on the hunt for one elusive killer. A killer who is targeting seemingly unconnected women and placing strange objects at their death scenes in a series of chilling rituals.

As the Private team races to find a link that will lead them to the next victim, an unseen menace threatens to destroy the agency from within-and plunge the city into chaos. With countless lives hanging in the balance, Santosh must confront the demons of his past . . . before Private India meets an explosive end.

Go Set A Watchman

Author: Harper Lee
Publisher:  Harper; 1 edition (July 14, 2015)
ISBN: 978-0-06-240985-0

From Harper Lee comes a landmark new novel set two decades after her beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch—”Scout”—returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise’s homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town, and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past—a journey that can only be guided by one’s own conscience.

Written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman imparts a fuller, richer understanding and appreciation of Harper Lee. Here is an unforgettable novel of wisdom, humanity, passion, humor, and effortless precision—a profoundly affecting work of art that is both wonderfully evocative of another era and relevant to our own times. It not only confirms the enduring brilliance of To Kill a Mockingbird, but also serves as its essential companion, adding depth, context, and new meaning to an American classic.

No Excuses

Author: Derrick Coleman Jr.
Publisher: Gallery/Jeter Publishing (June 2, 2015)
ISBN: 978-1-4767-9658-1

Trailblazing Seattle Seahawks fullback Derrick Coleman Jr.—the first deaf athlete to play offense in the NFL—tells his inspirational journey of persevering through every obstacle, remaining dedicated to the hard work and a no-excuses attitude that ultimately earned him a Super Bowl victory. Great for readers of all ages.

Even at a young age, if anyone told Derrick Coleman what he couldn’t do, he’d just reply, “Watch me.” Diagnosed as hearing-impaired at age three, he faced a potentially limited future, but neither he nor his family were going to let that happen. Now Derrick shares the story of his remarkable journey toward NFL stardom, of the friends and colleagues who cheered him on when skeptics tried to chip away at his confidence, and of how every challenge he faced only strengthened his resolve.

At the heart of his story is his unconventional family, whose one constant was always love. When Derrick was misunderstood as “difficult,” or bullied and laughed at by schoolmates, he removed his hearing aids and listened instead to his mother’s advice: Never let anyone else tell you how far you can go.

Playing football became an outlet for Derrick’s restless energy and a way of proving he could forge his own path. As a senior at UCLA, he became a standout, an award-winning player who led his team with eleven touchdowns and demonstrated to the world what his heart had known all along: He had what it took to be a champion.

No Excuses is more than just Derrick Coleman’s story as a sports legend, inspirational role model, and icon. It’s a motivating and unique testament to the human spirit, to the potential inside everyone who has ever faced difficult obstacles. It’s about aiming high in life, giving it your all, and never ever settling for excuses.

Family Life

Author: Akhil Sharma
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (2014)
ISBN: 978-0-393-06005-8

Hailed as a “supreme storyteller” (Philadelphia Inquirer) for his “cunning, dismaying and beautifully conceived” fiction (New York Times), Akhil Sharma is possessed of a narrative voice “as hypnotic as those found in the pages of Dostoyevsky” (The Nation). In his highly anticipated second novel, Family Life, he delivers a story of astonishing intensity and emotional precision.

We meet the Mishra family in Delhi in 1978, where eight-year-old Ajay and his older brother Birju play cricket in the streets, waiting for the day when their plane tickets will arrive and they and their mother can fly across the world and join their father in America. America to the Mishras is, indeed, everything they could have imagined and more: when automatic glass doors open before them, they feel that surely they must have been mistaken for somebody important. Pressing an elevator button and the elevator closing its doors and rising, they have a feeling of power at the fact that the elevator is obeying them. Life is extraordinary until tragedy strikes, leaving one brother severely brain-damaged and the other lost and virtually orphaned in a strange land. Ajay, the family’s younger son, prays to a God he envisions as Superman, longing to find his place amid the ruins of his family’s new life.

Heart-wrenching and darkly funny, Family Life is a universal story of a boy torn between duty and his own survival.