The big fight : my life in and out of the ring

 by Sugar Ray Leonard. In this moving memoir, boxing legend Leonard tells his story of growing up as a ghetto kid whose athletic skills lifted him into a world of fame for which he was ill-prepared. Born in 1956, Ray Charles Leonard grew up near Washington, D.C., in an African-American suburb.. A shy boy, Ray was goaded by an older brother to enter the ring, where he discovered a talent for the sport. Ray's meteoric rise through the amateur ranks led to a gold medal in the 1976 Olympics. With a flashy style and a media-ready persona, "Sugar Ray" became a big draw as a pro and fought in some of the most lucrative boxing matches of his era. Leonard frames his memoir around the most important event of his career-his middleweight title fight with Marvin Hagler in 1987. Leonard hadn't fought since 1984 yet he managed to win a split decision. The true focus of the book, however, is Leonard's struggles with celebrity. He writes honestly of the many affairs he had while married, as well as his addiction to alcohol and cocaine. Few of our cultural icons look at themselves so clearly, and it's a tribute to Leonard's insightfulness that he makes his story such a gripping one. --Publishers Weekly (Check catalog)

To be sung underwater : a novel

 by Tom McNeal.  *Starred Review* Judith Whitman is deeply dissatisfied with her seemingly glamorous life in California. Her work as a film editor, which once held such joy, now gives her migraines; she suspects that her urbane husband is having an affair; and her beautiful daughter, once so loving, is now revealed as entitled and self-absorbed. Increasingly, her thoughts are drawn to the summers she lived in Nebraska with her father, specifically, the summer she fell in love with Willy Blunt. One phone call to him is all it takes for her to ditch her work and her life and head back to Nebraska. There she comes face to face with the full ramifications of her earlier decision to leave home for Stanford and lose touch with the boy with whom she had been so deeply in love. Their easy familiarity with each other, their special humor, and their physical connection instantly resurface. In this thoughtful and compelling look at the road not taken, McNeal (Goodnight, Nebraska, 1998) calls up the landscape of the Great Plains as a place where it's possible to see that it's the simple things a secluded swimming hole, a cold beer, the laughter of the person you love that are most valuable. --Booklist (Check catalog)

At the devil's table : the untold story of the insider who brought down the Cali Cartel

 by William C. Rempel. In the 1990s, Jorge Salcedo was a Colombian engineer and military reservist proud to be enlisted in an effort to assassinate Pablo Escobar, leader of the Medellin cocaine cartel. His recruiters were Cal. gentlemen. heads of Escobar's rival cocaine cartel. Salcedo admired their sense of family and their restraint, despite their unsavory business dealings. As head of security, he was only tangentially involved, at a distance that allowed him to keep his hands clean and maintain denial. But as he was drawn closer and closer to the family and its business dealings, even after Escobar's death, the Cali clan escalated its level of violence, and he could no longer deny that they were as dangerous and ruthless as Escobar. Salcedo had to find a way out and ended up working with American DEA agents to bring down the syndicate. Investigative reporter Rempel spent 10 years interviewing Salcedo (now in the U.S. witness protection program) to deliver a thrilling inside story of one man's efforts to destroy the cartel and free himself from its murderous grasp. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The borrower : a novel

 by Rebecca Makkai. *Starred Review* Lucy, a 26-year-old children's librarian, has a favorite patron, a bright, book-loving 10-year-old named Ian. The trouble is, the boy's fundamentalist mother insists he read only books with the breath of God in them. When the parents enroll their son in a behavior-modification program designed to cure him of his nascent homosexuality, the boy runs away, and Lucy decides she must help. Borrowing the boy, Lucy takes Ian two fugitives now on the road. But who is really running away? Is it Ian or is it Lucy, replicating the experience of her emigre parents, who, years before, had run away from their Russian homeland? And is America, as a friend of Lucy's family claims, truly a nation of runaways but with no place left to run? Time (and considerable driving in Lucy's ancient car) may tell. An accomplished short story writer, Makkai has written a splendid first novel that cleverly weaves telling references to children's books into her whimsically patchwork plot. Larger-than-life characters and an element of the picaresque add to the book's delights. Best of all, however, is Lucy's absolutely unshakable faith in the power of books to save. From her lips, readers, to God's ear. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Half the sky : turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide

 by Nicholas D. Kristof. Despite an estimated 107 million women and girls missing in the world population due to every form of abuse, from infant neglect to honor killings, gendercide receives none of the coverage and outrage of other human-rights violations, lament these two Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists. The husband-and-wife team chronicles the horrific abuses suffered by girls and women: sold into sex slavery, abused and exploited as workers, beaten and killed to protect male honor, and generally denied education, medical attention, and food reserved for boys and men. The authors focus on sex trafficking, gender-based violence (including honor killings and mass rape), and maternal mortality. They also examine the economic forces at work that promise more opportunities, along with required education and resulting autonomy, for female workers and entrepreneurs as developing countries recognize how they waste this valuable resource. Kristof and WuDunn reinforce the truth behind the terrible statistics with passionately reported personal stories of girls and women (including photographs) and efforts to help them, including a final chapter suggesting how readers can help. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Silver girl : a novel

 by Elin Hilderbrand. The rug is pulled out from under Meredith Martin Delinn when her husband is accused of operating a Ponzi scheme and sentenced to 150 years in prison, and she is treated as a pariah. With no home, no friends, and no money, she turns to childhood friend Connie Flute. They have not spoken for three years, yet Connie promptly picks Meredith up in Manhattan and takes her to her summer home on Nantucket. Both women have wounds to deal with. Meredith is the object not only of scorn but also of a federal investigation. Connie is coping with the death of her husband and estrangement from her daughter. Meredith's arrival gives Connie the excuse to start living again, but their once golden lives are no more, and now, once someone discovers that Meredith is staying at Connie's place, they even have to face threats and danger. Another winner from Hilderbrand (The Castaways, 2009), who in this sensitive and suspenseful tale succeeds in portraying a seemingly unlikable character, besieged Meredith, and making her human. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Poetry 180 : a turning back to poetry

 by Billy Collins. A dazzling new anthology of 180 contemporary poems, selected and introduced by America's Poet Laureate, Billy Collins. Inspired by Billy Collins's poem-a-day program with the Library of Congress, Poetry 180 is the perfect anthology for readers who appreciate engaging, thoughtful poems that are an immediate pleasure. A 180-degree turn implies a turning back--in this case, to poetry. A collection of 180 poems by the most exciting poets at work today, Poetry 180 represents the richness and diversity of the form, and is designed to beckon readers with a selection of poems that are impossible not to love at first glance. Open the anthology to any page and discover a new poem to cherish, or savor all the poems, one at a time, to feel the full measure of contemporary poetry's vibrance and abundance. With poems by Catherine Bowman, Lucille Clifton, Billy Collins, Dana Gioia, Edward Hirsch, Galway Kinnell, Kenneth Koch, Philip Levine, Thomas Lux, William Matthews, Frances Mayes, Paul Muldoon, Naomi Shihab Nye, Sharon Olds, Katha Pollitt, Mary Jo Salter, Charles Simic, David Wojahn, Paul Zimmer, and many more. --Summary (Check Catalog)

Folly Beach

 by Dorothea Benton Frank. Frank's latest novel displays a rare talent that fans will welcome. Cate's philandering husband has died, leaving her nothing, and the entire contents of her sizable home have been repossessed. She returns to her relatives in Charleston hoping to get a grip on what has happened and on what comes next. Cate's new life with her firecracker of an aunt in the South is told primarily through hilarious and engaging dialogue with family and friends, with a smattering of seriousness along the way. The recently widowed protagonist's journey to rediscovering joy and love will thrill readers, especially with the addition of a suavely integrated story-within-a-story involving a one-woman play about the lovers who wrote Porgy and Bess. There's a certain authenticity to the lives Frank tells that will resonate with many women. Frank's telling of this tale will help readers celebrate love and sexuality after 60. --Publishers Weekly (Check catalog)

Marshalling justice : the early civil rights letters of Thurgood Marshall

 Readers for whom Marshall is best known for arguing and winning Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954 and becoming the first African-American Supreme Court Justice in 1967 will find this collection of letters written between 1935 and 1957 thoroughly illuminating. Long's introductions lend a fluidity and coherence to the book; he presents each letter with so much context that the book has elements of a biography of Marshall and a history of the civil rights movement. The letters-which span Marshall's legal career from his first major civil rights case, Murray v. Pearson, in 1936-contain a rich vein of local history as well as correspondence concerning his major cases. Nor does Marshall's major case law focus deter him from attention to media misrepresentation, racial inequities in pay, military racism, or accounts of prison abuse and the persistence of lynching. "At times," Marshall wrote in 1949, "I get a little anxious about people who have no regard whatsoever for the amount of time necessary for lawyers to prepare this involved type of litigation." These letters offer a welcome and readable inner glimpse into that laborious and complex work. --Publishers Weekly (Check catalog)