You’ve seen the headlines. On the court they brawl with opponents, fight with fans, and attack their own coach. Off the court they get drunk, grope women, and, sometimes, get tried for murder. Now these all-star bad boys from the ranks of today’s pro basketball provide easy layup material for the fictional imaginations of our finest contemporary mystery writers. Refereed by prizewinning editor Otto Penzler, this anthology collects fourteen dazzling, original tales of buzzer-beating suspense and postgame mayhem. In “Keller’s Double Dribble,” Lawrence Block tails a clueless hitman with courtside tickets to unplanned bloodshed… Jeffery Deaver’s power guard summons his formidable game instincts to thwart a pack of scammers in “Nothing but Net”… a flagrant foul and a cruel betrayal send a star player crashing in Mike Lupica’s “Mrs. Cash”… George Pelecanos’s “String Music” traces the dangerous escalation of a playground beef… and in “Galahad, Inc.,” by Joan H. Parker and Robert B. Parker, a college prodigy seeks unlikely defensive help against a sorority party sex rap. Other literary slam-dunk tales ask just how hard a former Olympic medalist will fight to get back his old glory… what hustle will win you the dunk-or-die prison matchup… and why the pride of the Knicks will never live to see the playoffs. You’ll find all the answers inside these pages from acclaimed storytellers Sue DeNymme, Brendan DuBois, Parnell Hall, Laurie R. King, Michael Malone, R. D. Rosen, S. J. Rozan, Justin Scott, and Stephen Solomita. There’s the whistle. Here’s the tip-off. Let these great clutch shot-makers put you in the zone

This is a love story. It is true. It has a happy ending. It is a story about a man and a woman, about breast cancer and mastectomy and recovery. It is about courage and self control, about unity, about compassion, about Joan Parker and her husband and their sons. It is about family and triumph and pervading tenderness. It is about love. In Three Weeks in Spring, the Parkers tell us, with a novelist’s skill, the way it was in April when Joan got sick. The way the fear escalated, the way they had to control it, and keep it in, and fight it off. Was it cancer? Would it spread? Would she die? Three Weeks in Spring speaks of pain, and fear. But it speaks ultimately about strength and the power of love. It is a book filled with humor and with an unbreakable will to laugh. The good guys win in this book. And to follow the Parkers through fear and laughter and growing elation during three weeks in a recent spring is to share in the victory