St. Louis has been the heartbeat of American soccer for years, dominating in club, high school, and college soccer. To this day, St. Louis University has the most NCAA Division I men's soccer national championship titles. Yet, in 1996, when Major League Soccer kicked off its inaugural season, there was no team to represent the Gateway to the West. How did this happen? Author Shane Stay guides you through St. Louis soccer's journey, from its past to the present, including the launch of St. Louis CITY SC. The story will start 100 years in the past and follow the major achievements—and setbacks—of St. Louis soccer. Shane recounts not only the history of soccer at the club, high school, college, and professional levels, but he also provides some helpful hints for which are the best local attractions for soccer fans, and he even goes so far as to predict the future successes of St. Louis CITY SC. This is one book soccer fans will want to have on their shelves!

The award-winning first book in the series featuring black LAPD homicide detective Charlotte Justice. Meet Detective Charlotte Justice, a black woman in the very white, very male, and sometimes very racist Los Angeles Police Department. The time is 48 hours into the epochal L.A. riots and she and her fellow officers are exhausted. She saves the curfew-breaking black doctor Lance Mitchell from a potentially lethal beating from some white officers—only to discover nearby the body of one-time radical Cinque Lewis, a thug who years before had murdered her husband and young daughter. Was it a random shooting or was Mitchell responsible? And what had brought Lewis back to a city he'd long since fled? Charlotte's quest for the truth behind Cinque's death will set her at odds with the LAPD hierarchy, plunge her into the intricacies of everything from L.A.'s gang-banging politics to its black blue-bloods, and lead her into deep emotional waters with Mitchell's partner (and her old flame), Dr. Aubrey Scott. In Charlotte Justice, Paula L. Woods has created a tough, tart, but also vulnerable heroine sure to draw comparisons to such classic figures as Easy Rawlins and Kinsey Milhone, but a true original as well. Winner of the Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel from Mystery Readers International.

Despite being a major figure of Haitian literature, Jean-Claude Charles (1949-2008) has received relatively little scholarly attention to date. The present volume seeks to serve as an introduction to the work and universe of this unique and capital writer to an English-language readership. The essays in the collection are organized along three major axes: contextual articles, placing Charles’ work within the larger Haitian literary landscape, punctual articles, addressing specific themes in a selection of Charles’ books, and author testimonials, attesting to Charles’ work’s importance both to his contemporaries and to a new generation of writers. With the ongoing republication of Charles’ work by Mémoire d’encrier in Montreal, and the increasing interest in the author, the proposed volume is timely and necessary, and is in large part a critical accompaniment to the republishing programme. Described by Dany Laferrière as “most brilliant Haitian author of his generation,” Charles has until recently remained largely unread and little understood. As the various chapters in the volume show, Charles is an author for now, and the collection will accompany readers seeking strikingly original insights on issues such as race, migration, and exile, and the role of the author and literature in times of crisis.

What city broke barriers by welcoming some of the first African American baseball players in addition to the first female owners of both an MLB and NFL team? Where have local colleges dominated a specific sport, winning dozens of national titles over as many years? The answer, of course, lies in St. Louis, a hotbed of professional and amateur sports with a diverse history and an evolving legacy of success. In St. Louis Sports Memories: Forgotten Teams and Moments from America’s Best Sports Town, relive the highlights from the championships to the crossroads of social change that have characterized St. Louis’s sports scene for more than a century. Learn about the tennis legend who found an accepting environment to master his game during the racial turmoil of the 1960s. Make sure you can recite both the four MLB teams and the four NFL teams that have called St. Louis home. Each moment or memory is accompanied by history and anecdotes to form an indelible vignette showcasing some of the most loved as well as the long forgotten stories of the names you know and the ones you should know. Local award-winning author Ed Wheatley brings his die-hard fan perspective to this unique and nostalgic look at St. Louis’s winning record. Root for the home teams and for the bygone heroes in this town that boasts one of the greatest histories in the annals of sports.

Through a series of unfortunate events, twenty-year-old Corey, is left homeless in Wellington city. His out-of-the-ordinary experiences teach him to see the world through different eyes. Disgusted by the modern world, he embarks on an urban odyssey in order to find peace and freedom in a world gone mad. Throughout his adventure, he encounters people from his past who assist him along the way. His friends offer him a temporary sense of home, along with utilities and tools that would prove to be useful. But, after being jumped by a bunch of hoodlums, he is left, once again, with no backbone, no food, no shelter. Out of desperation, he seeks refuge at an old friend’s house where he reconnects with his best friend from high school, Tony. Like Corey, Tony is experiencing his own problems. After losing his roofing job he is practically homeless, also. Tony resonates with Corey’s sense of displacement, and the two boys band together in face of an unforgiving world. However, the boys’ search for freedom and peace ironically drags them into the darkest corners of suburbia, where they acquaint themselves with a dysfunctional drug dealing family who provide them with the income they need to flee the town, but, as the boys soon discover, this type of lifestyle doesn’t go without its fair share of consequences.