The best books about curveballs (baseball)

In Dark Archives, Megan Rosenbloom seeks out the historic and scientific truths behind anthropodermic bibliopegy―the practice of binding books in this most intimate covering. Dozens of such books live on in the world’s most famous libraries and museums. Dark Archives exhumes their origins and brings to life the doctors, murderers, and indigents whose lives are sewn together in this disquieting collection. Along the way, Rosenbloom tells the story of how her team of scientists, curators, and librarians test rumored anthropodermic books, untangling the myths around their creation and reckoning with the ethics of their custodianship.

In Dark Archives―captivating and macabre in all the right ways―Rosenbloom has crafted a narrative that is equal parts detective work, academic intrigue, history, and medical curiosity: a book as rare and thrilling as its subject.

Luke Sinclair, a Special Forces Operative, is finished with his career in an elite British black ops department. As tough as it had been, Luke loved his job and his partner, Sam Locke, who had once been a US Navy SEAL. Then their world fell apart.

Until their old commanding officer, Elizabeth Brant, recalls them to London. Forced together again to transport the one person able to finish breaking them. A terrorist who destroyed their lives and their love. From the deserts of Syria, the men chase a nuclear bomb and a weaponised virus through Armenia and into Russia, finding so much more than revenge on the way.

A young girl’s parents are killed during the NATO bombing of Belgrade during the 1999 Kosovo War. Katarina Petrovic grows up with a hatred for Americans and becomes a willing recruit for Russia’s espionage agency, the SVR.

When American pilots involved in the bombing are assassinated, Alex Baker, former commander of an Air Force Office of Special Investigations, and whose father was one of those victims, is brought into the investigation. The OSI, CIA, and FBI begin an international search for a female assassin working for the SVR but with an apparent personal motive of revenge. Twists and turns involving her identity keep everyone guessing until Alex, and an attractive female CIA agent head to the island of Key West and a thrilling conclusion.

Mark Langley risked everything to protect his family. He was assaulted and burnt as his assailants tried to force information from him. Now his family believes he’s dead. As Mark recovers from his burns and PTSD, he must stay in the shadows and wait for the man behind the assault to return to the U.S.—even at the risk of losing his wife to another man.

Hailey Langley cannot accept her husband Mark is dead, but her children are grieving and she must bury her own needs to focus on maintaining some semblance of normalcy for her son and daughter.

Sadie Navarro rescued a mare from an auction accomplishing what she thought was the most important mission of her young life. Now, that mare is headed to a ranch in Montana and a home Sadie knows nothing about. She wants to make sure the horse is in good hands, but Montana is far away and a different world from Maryland. Will fourteen-year-old Sadie need to stand up to rugged cowboys to protect her special rescue horse?

A sheltered mother. A medically fragile child. They can’t just disappear. Or can they?

A typical day of medical appointments and errands. Elizabeth can handle it, she tells herself. She’ll do it all until her husband returns on the weekend. But someone else has a plan—several someones—throwing Elizabeth’s orderly life into chaos and danger. Now, she’s on her own. Neither her parents nor her husband are there to protect her. No one knows where they are. If her son is to get out of this alive, it’s up to Elizabeth. Ordinary people, thrown into extraordinary circumstances. Read Gone, Book One of the psychological thriller series When Bad Things Happen.

In Creating Superfans, award-winning entrepreneur and keynote speaker Brittany Hodak shares a powerful framework for transforming your business from a commodity into a category of one. Brittany has helmed fan-engagement campaigns for brands including Walmart, Disney, Amazon, and dozens of other global brands. Creating Superfans combines sharp business insights with entertaining stories from work with stars like Taylor Swift, Dolly Parton, and Mötley Crüe. Memorable case studies from businesses of all sizes illustrate that customer experience, or CX, is the battlefield for winning—and keeping—customers. Brittany’s game-changing CX system, the SUPER Model, is simple to learn, deploy, and measure across every organization.

Whether you’re launching a new business or running a hundred-year-old brand, Creating Superfans gives the entire team a shared playbook for tapping into the unmatched power of superfandom.

My Body Is A Big Fat Temple, a memoir of pregnancy and early motherhood, follows a writer as she debates having children, miscarries, faces morning sickness, uncertainty, physical impairments, labor, breastfeeding, the “baby blues,” the heartache of not loving her son as she thinks she should, parenting through a plague, until finally (basically, mostly) blossoming into her new identity.

The undertaking of creating life is airbrushed to preserve the ideal of motherhood and exacerbated by a culture that dictates what women can do and how they should feel. We don’t get the full story, so mothers with unromantic experiences feel like aberrations, and worse, alone. This is why the voices of women matter. The voices of mothers matter. Here’s one to remind you of the important things.

In Dark Archives, Megan Rosenbloom seeks out the historic and scientific truths behind anthropodermic bibliopegy―the practice of binding books in this most intimate covering. Dozens of such books live on in the world’s most famous libraries and museums. Dark Archives exhumes their origins and brings to life the doctors, murderers, and indigents whose lives are sewn together in this disquieting collection. Along the way, Rosenbloom tells the story of how her team of scientists, curators, and librarians test rumored anthropodermic books, untangling the myths around their creation and reckoning with the ethics of their custodianship.

In Dark Archives―captivating and macabre in all the right ways―Rosenbloom has crafted a narrative that is equal parts detective work, academic intrigue, history, and medical curiosity: a book as rare and thrilling as its subject.

Three years ago, leaving San Fernando felt like the best way out of the mess I was neck-deep in. An addict to all things forbidden, I betrayed everyone I loved and watched my little sister pay for my sins with her life. An escape felt like a blessing, so I ran away and left the ashes of my past drift behind me. This is why returning to my hometown was never on the menu. Nor was falling in love with my childhood friend whose heart had been irreparably broken by yours truly. But my father’s death turned out to be a twist I wasn’t expecting, and I had no choice but to come back home, face my demons, and head the family and what was left of my father’s business.