Did you know that boxing is the number one fitness trend in America, outpacing spinning and yoga? It’s a workout that engages the mind and the body, incorporating strength training, cardio, and reflexes. But why is this good for children? Self-confidence! Self-discipline! Healthy lifestyle! The value of hard work! Meeting people who are different from you. All three of my children have gravitated to boxing. My son started at age 8 and continues to train as a college student. My middle daughter trained for the Golden Gloves as her COVID-19 pandemic focus. My oldest daughter has recently found her way into boxing after graduating from Rhode Island College of Design.
Torrey Maldonado captures the voices and choices of a gritty neighborhood with grace and hope.
Trev lives in the projects and has to learn to fight to stay safe. When his stepfather hits his mother, he has to make the decision to use his hands for fighting or for a better future as an artist. What is the best way to help his family?
Trev would do anything to protect his mum and sisters, especially from his stepdad. But his stepdad's return stresses Trev - because when he left, he threatened Trev's mum. Rather than live scared, Trev takes matters into his own hands, literally. He starts learning to box to handle his stepdad. But everyone isn't a fan of his plan, because Trev's a talented artist, and his hands could actually help him build a better future. And they're letting him know. But their advice for some distant future feels useless in his reality right now. Ultimately, Trev knows his future is in…
I’m a poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, and writing professor at New York University. I also have a fascination with altered states of consciousness, especially with mysticism, psychosis, and psychedelic art. (My book James Joyce’s Mandala examines all three.) My first novel, Claiming De Wayke, delves into those elements too, but with a particular focus on vivid first-person narration, so most of my recommendations involve books that are not only trippy in terms of plot and characterization but are also psychedelically inflected in their use of language itself. I hope you check some of them out.
This title is the anomaly on my list. For one, it’s a collection of short stories rather than a standalone work. Also, there’s no overt psychedelia in it.
Nevertheless, I wanted to include it because many of the best stories in this collection have a gritty realism in them that gives way suddenly to moments of intense grace and spiritual insight. That insight may come in the form of brain damage after a boxing fight gone wrong, treatment for terminal cancer, or some other seemingly unfortunate turn.
But Jones has a gift for crafting vibrant, larger-than-life characters who know how to squeeze every drop out of vivid, absurd existence.
All these pugilistic narratives touch on people in hardship moving through dark spaces in their lives. I care about people on the fringes. I’ve known many people who have little or nothing. For a lot of my life, I’ve had little. I used to box. When something’s in your blood, you think about it every day. I can’t remember a day I haven’t thought about boxing. Once you’ve done it, it’s hard not to want to go back. You try to just pretend it away, but when it’s in you, it’s got hold. Because I understand this so well, feel it, have lived it, I absorb these boxing stories in a different kind of way.
Heinz takes the day-to-day minutia of being a boxer and makes it something beautiful. While the novel follows Eddie Brown’s quest for the middleweight title, told from the cynical perspective of sportswriter Frank Hughes, what’s really being relayed is everything it takes to build up to the one moment so few people ever face—that one-on-one in the ring you’ve got nowhere to run from the truth, from yourself. Did you prepare enough? Did you give it your all? And just who in the hell are you, really?
Originally published in 1958, The Professional is the story of boxer Eddie Brown's quest for the middleweight championship of the world. But it is so much more. W. C. Heinz not only serves up a realistic depiction of the circus-like atmosphere around boxing with its assorted hangers-on, crooked promoters, and jaded journalists, but he gives us two memorable characters in Eddie Brown and in Brown's crusty trainer, Doc Carroll. They are at the heart of this poignant story as they bond together with their eye on the only prize that matters,the middleweight championship. The Professional is W. C. Heinz at…
I love this gang of elderly sleuths, and I hope this was not their last caper. I adore books with older characters, and these are fully drawn with real-life tragedies. This book was hilarious and heartbreaking. A line regarding the title: Waiting for the last devil to die? What a joke. New devils will always spring up, like daffodils in springtime.
A new mystery is afoot in the fourth book in the Thursday Murder Club series from million-copy bestselling author Richard Osman
You'd think you be allowed to relax over Christmas, but not in the world of the Thursday Murder Club.
On Boxing Day, a dangerous package is smuggled across the English coast. When it goes missing, chaos is unleashed. The body count starts to rise – including someone close to the Thursday Murder Club--as our gang face an impossible search, and their most deadly opponents yet.
With the clock ticking down and a killer heading to Cooper’s Chase, has their…
I’ve been fascinated by crime since I was young, at first reading historical true crime and then reading widely in the crime fiction genre. What intrigues me about crime is the sense of the world being broken, and although the perpetrator might be caught and punished, their actions forever change the world. I was a member of a crime book group that focused on crime novels, and I’ve reviewed a number of true crime books. I’ve also attended and spoken at the Bristol Crime Fest–an annual festival of crime writing. I regularly give talks on crime writing and how, as a crime writer, I go about picking the perfect poison.
Although I love a good murder story, I also enjoy fiction about other sorts of crime.
In this book, Manchester-based private investigator Kate Brannigan has two cases to solve: a series of art thefts and a case of industrial sabotage that leads to two murders that seem at first glance to be unconnected. Kate is determined to solve the case, even if it involves using unorthodox methods to do so.
I love her range of skills, from Thai boxing to going undercover to staking out a suspect. I find Kate a very likable character: funny, sarcastic, conflicted about her love life, and with a backing group of friends she genuinely cares for.
The fourth riveting thriller in the Kate Brannigan series, from No.1 Sunday Times bestseller Val McDermid.
'The Queen of Crime is still at the top of her game' Independent
When a Monet is stolen from a stately home, Manchester-based private eye Kate Brannigan goes head to head with organized crime as she hunts the thieves through Europe.
Meanwhile, someone is leaving a trail of bodies across the Northwest. As Kate confronts some harsh truths in her own life, the case stretches her love and loyalty to its limits.
I am the author of two books (the first book was Leora’s Letters: The Story of Love and Loss for an Iowa Family During World War II), a blogger, an Iowa historian, and a regular contributor to Our American Stories. I’ve woven letters and newspaper clippings, along with memoirs and family stories, into the narratives of the lives of Clabe and Leora Wilson. As their oldest granddaughter, I also enjoy giving programs, as well as TV and radio interviews, about the Wilson family.
Boxing was such a popular sport during the Great Depression. My grandparents’ family regularly listened to “the fights” on the radio. Dubbed “Cinderella Man” by writer Damon Runyon, James J. Braddock, with 24 losses, won one of the biggest upsets in heavyweight boxing championship history. He defeated Max Baer on June 13, 1935, in Long Island City, New York, for the world title in a unanimous decision after a grueling 15 rounds.
The next day, Leora Wilson wrote her two sons who’d joined the Navy during the Depression, “Expect you may have heard the Braddock and Baer fight. I’m glad Braddock won–he needs the money for his family.” Not only that, but Braddock had been “on the dole” at one point, an underdog in many ways. He was so embarrassed at needing help to feed his three children that he paid back the money he’d received from the government. A…
A riveting tale of perseverance in the face of hardship, Cinderella Man is the chronicle of the boxer James J. Braddock, whose exceptional story of achievement against all odds was the subject of a major motion picture. Braddock, dubbed the Cinderella Man, staged the greatest comeback in fighting history, rising in the span of twelve months from the relief rolls to a face-off against the heavyweight champion, Max Baer.
Against the gritty backdrop of Depression-era New York, Schaap paints a vivid picture of the fight world in its golden age, evoking a time when boxing resonated with a country trying…
I was born in England to Australian parents and have lived most of my life in Australia. My family all live there, and I grew up in Sydney. Most of my books have been about Australian-related themes or historical figures. I don’t think enough is known about Australian history outside Australia. Australian writers have always struggled for recognition outside Australia. Publishing can be an unfair business. I’m more interested in reading nonfiction than fiction. True stories are much harder to write and get right, and there’s a bigger responsibility involved. You’re dealing with real people. The dead ones also have families.
Full disclosure: This was a book I edited back in 1999 when I was working as an editor at HarperCollins. I'm not sure if it was ever published outside Australia, but it should have been.
Wells, a sports journalist, tells the amazing story of the heavyweight world title boxing fight between African-American Jack Johnson and Canadian Tommy Burns at Rushcutters Bay in Sydney in 1908. It features a cast of incredible characters, including Jack London.
Describes the championship bout between Johnson and Burns in Australia and the impact of Johnson's unexpected victory, including Jack London's call for a "Great White Hope"
I’m from North East England, an area of the UK under-represented in contemporary fiction. I love reading books from authors who grew up in the same area as me, and I enjoy stories that deal with issues relevant to our communities and capture the unique spirit of the people here. My writing is infused with social and political issues. I’m passionate about stories that explore the world around us and how it impacts people, and all these books do that in very different ways.
This brutal, beautiful book with a powerful, authentic northern voice captured my attention. Set in County Durham, the story follows young Traveller John-John after he is released from a young offender’s institution for a violent crime and tries to turn his life around. Despite his good intentions, he is soon caught up in a fight with local drug dealers.
I loved this book because it took an unflinching look at a community not often depicted in contemporary fiction and featured a complex, conflicted character (who loves dogs) who struggles to escape his past.
The book is by an author I admire. He writes gritty, dark northern fiction that focuses on the fringes of society. Originally published by independent presses, he has gone on to be very successful, and as an independent northern author, I would love to emulate that career trajectory.
WINNER OF THE GORDON BURN PRIZE
An unflinching portrait of contemporary Traveller culture by the award-winning author of The Gallows Pole
John-John wants to escape his past. But the legacy of brutality left by his boxer father, King of the Gypsies, Mac Wisdom, overshadows his life. His new job as an ice cream man should offer freedom, but instead pulls him into the dark recesses of a northern town where his family name is mud. When he attempts to trade prejudice and parole officers for the solace of the rural landscape, Mac's bloody downfall threatens John-John's very survival.
Having written over twenty-five books, including ten books on boxing, I have been involved with the sport through my work as a historian for the International Boxing Hall of Fame. I also sit on the Board of Directors Connecticut Boxing Hall of Fame and have penned biographies on five members of the International Boxing Hall of Fame. My name is Mark Allen Baker, and I am a historian and award-winning author.
This gifted author I have yet to meet but do hope our paths will cross before the final bell. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published over 50 novels, several plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her personal, yet insightful, view of the sport will resonate with every fan of the sweet science.
Joyce Carol Oates explores the world of professional boxing, examining the subject from many angles: boxing as metaphor, spectacle and history, boxing as seen in literature and film and by women. The author chronicles many famous figures such as Jack Dempsey, Barry McGuigan, Joe Louis and others. She also looks beyond the ring at the links between violence and racism and at how boxing vindicates disenfranchised youth. Joyce Carol Oates is also author of the novel "Marya: A Life".
Zelenyj might be the best and least-known short story writer. His brand of strange, weird short stories extends well beyond the Canadian borders of his home country and connects far and wide with the characters and plots.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this collection, but each short story resonated, and I felt compelled to discover each new world he’d created.
The lonely and the regretful and the downtrodden, the furious and the woeful and the damaged; all facing the futility of living in a world of malice, loss and loneliness; all desperately seeking salvation while forging through the miles of pain marking every step of the path to Paradise . . . A farmer sings a nightly funeral dirge, summoning something from far across the fields. A cavalry troop finds Heaven or Hell in the hills. A reporter witnesses the final inexplicable moments of a saucer suicide cult. A boy and his grandfather hear a message from an un-guessed world…
