Rick Dockery wanted to make football history -- but not that kind of football history. Last year, as a last-minute replacement in an AFC championship game, he single-handedly blew his team's 17-point lead. Now a national laughingstock, this unemployed backup quarterback is begging for a second chance. He finds it in unexpected ways in Parma, Italy, a place he's never heard of.

A singular sports novel by fiction maestro John Grisham. The master of the legal thriller, John Grisham was a criminal and civil lawyer in Mississippi when his first book, A Time to Kill, was published. Although he is best known for his legal thrillers, Grisham has ventured outside the genre with several well-received novels proving Grisham’s writing talents.

The Alchemist is the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure as extravagant as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the markets of Tangiers and across the Egyptian desert to a fateful encounter with the alchemist. The story of the treasures Santiago finds along the way teaches us, as only a few stories have done, about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, above all, following our dreams.

Brazilian author Paulo Coelho was born in 1947 in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Before dedicating his life completely to literature, he worked as theater director, actor, lyricist, and journalist.

Bestsellers Patterson and Ledwidge spin a fantastic tale of an audacious mass kidnapping and the unlikely detective thrust into the primary role of negotiator, sleuth and hero. Michael Bennett, a senior NYPD homicide detective, has a wife dying of cancer and 10 adopted children of various ethnic origins. When St. Patrick's Cathedral, site of the celebrity-packed funeral of a former first lady, is seized by a dozen ruthless men, Bennett ends up as point man for the hastily assembled negotiating team. From then on, the tale requires the reader to go with the flow as Bennett alternates visits to his wife's hospital bedside, brief trips to check on how his kids are managing and tense dealings with the well-prepared kidnappers.

From the #1 bestselling author who introduced readers to Alex Cross and the Women's Murder Club comes the beginning of a brand-new, electrifying series from "one of the bestselling writers in history" (New York Sun). Step On A Crack is James Patterson's most fiendishly terrifying thriller yet.

Michael Ledwidge is the son of Irish parents and was born and raised in the Bronx. A graduate of Manhattan College, he is married and has two children.

The Kite Runner is a novel about friendship, betrayal and about the price of loyalty. It is about the bonds between fathers and sons and the power of fathers over sons -- their love, their sacrifices, and their lies. Written against a backdrop of history that has not been told in fiction before, The Kite Runner describes the rich culture and beauty of a land in the process of being destroyed. But through the devastation, Khaled Hosseini offers hope: through the novel's faith in the power of reading and storytelling, and in the possibilities he shows us for redemption.

Afghan-born physician Khaled Hosseini rises at 4:00 every morning to pursue his second career &em as buzz-worthy, bestselling author. His first effort, The Kite Runner, is "a vivid and engaging story that reminds us how long his people have been struggling to triumph over the forces of violence," reflects The New York Times.

Jacob Jankowski is pushing 90 and wallowing in a nursing home, abandoned by his family and surrounded by aged octogenarians who irk him with their senility. Sara Gruen’s mesmerizing new novel is a compelling story of a man who lies in bed, drifting in and out of sleep, lucidness and dreams. Surprising, poignant and funny, Water for Elephants is that rare novel with a story so engrossing; one is reluctant to put it down.

Sara Gruen lives with her husband and three children in an environmentalist community outside of Chicago. An award-winning technical writer, she made her fiction debut in 2004 with Riding Lessons, followed by Flying Changes. Water for Elephants is her third novel.

It’s summer on Nantucket, and as the season begins, three women arrive at the local airport, observed by Josh, a local boy, home from college. Burdened with small children, unwieldy straw hats, and some obvious emotional issues, the women--two sisters and one friend--make their way to the sisters' tiny cottage, inherited from an aunt. They're all trying to escape from something. Soon Josh is part of the chaotic household, acting as babysitter, confidant, and, eventually, something more, while the women confront their pasts and map out their futures.

Elin Hilderbrand lives on Nantucket with her husband and their three young children. She grew up in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, and traveled extensively before settling on Nantucket, which has been the setting for her five previous novels. Hilderbrand is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the graduate fiction workshop at the University of Iowa.