In My TBR Stack:

Balloon Dog

Available 6/21/22

by Daniel Paisner

Koehler Books

Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

 

What happens when the life you are living is no longer the life you imagined? When you are well and truly stuck? A darkly comic tale of longing and legacy, Balloon Dog, the fourth novel from best-selling ghostwriter Daniel Paisner, prompts readers to consider what it means to leave a mark and what it takes to be swept up in the same currents that move almost everyone else. 

A brazen art heist pushes our protagonists to reflect on the choices they've made - and the ones that have been made for them. Set in the near-present, the story turns on the ill-conceived theft of a high-end Jeff Koons sculpture, lifted in plain sight from its perch beside a luxurious mountain home in Park City, Utah, and follows the musings, misadventures, and meeting of minds of a Long Island writer in midlife crisis and the art thief behind the ill conception.

Balloon Dog poses two central questions: Is the transformative power of art enough to lift us from our days? And what is art, anyway?

On My Radar:

Rise and Grind: Outperform, Outwork, and Outhustle Your Way to a More Successful and Rewarding Life

by Daymond John with Daniel Paisner

Currency Books / Harper Collins

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Daymond John knows what it means to push yourself hard–and he also knows how spectacularly a killer work ethic can pay off. As a young man, he founded a modest line of clothing on a $40 budget by hand-sewing hats between his shifts at Red Lobster. Today, his brand FUBU has over $6 billion in sales. 

Convenient though it might be to believe that you can shortcut your way to the top, says John, the truth is that if you want to get and stay ahead, you need to put in the work. You need to out-think, out-hustle, and out-perform everyone around you. You’ve got to rise and grind every day.  

In the anticipated follow-up to the bestselling The Power of Broke, Daymond takes an up close look at the hard-charging routines and winning secrets of individuals who have risen to the challenges in their lives and grinded their way to the very tops of their fields. Along the way, he also reveals how grit and persistence both helped him overcome the obstacles he has faced in life and ultimately fueled his success.

.On My Radar:

Relentless Spirit: The Unconventional Raising of a Champion
by Missy Franklin, D.A. Franklin, and Dick Franklin, with Daniel Paisner
Dutton Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:


What does it take to become a champion? Gold medalist Missy Franklin, along with her parents, D.A. and Dick, tell the inspirational and heartwarming story of how Missy became both a legendary athlete and a happy and confident woman, something they accomplished by doing things their own way and making the right choices for their family. 

The word relentless has many meanings for swimmer Missy Franklin.  In the pool, it reminds her to remain steady and persistent, unyielding in intensity and strength.  In life, it tells her to reach down for her very best, even when it feels like there’s nothing left.  The motto “don’t quit” doesn’t do it for Missy, but relentless gets her where she needs to be. And when Missy faces a challenge or a setback, her relentless spirit is what empowers her to learn, adapt, and move forward into the future.
 
In Relentless Spirit, Missy and her parents, D.A. and Dick Franklin, share the story of how Missy became the athlete she is today, a six-time Olympic medalist, five of them gold. Since her Olympic debut in London’s 2012 games—when Missy was just seventeen—people who have met the Franklins or seen them on TV have wondered what it was like to raise such a champion. What was the training like? How did Missy handle school? How did the family find the right facilities, coaches, and support network? 
 
The story that Missy, and her parents, share inside is both inspiring and heartwarming, explaining how she became both a legendary athlete and a happy and confident woman, something they accomplished by doing things their own way and making the right choices for their family, which includes Missy’s faith journey, something she writes about with inspirational candor.

Including the highs, the tough moments, and everything in-between, Relentless Spirit tells the story of a woman - and a family - full of love, heart, faith, and resilience.  

What does it take to become a champion? Gold medalist Missy Franklin, along with her parents, D.A. and Dick, tell the inspirational and heartwarming story of how Missy became both a legendary athlete and a happy and confident woman, something they accomplished by doing things their own way and making the right choices for their family. 

The word relentless has many meanings for swimmer Missy Franklin.  In the pool, it reminds her to remain steady and persistent, unyielding in intensity and strength.  In life, it tells her to reach down for her very best, even when it feels like there’s nothing left.  The motto “don’t quit” doesn’t do it for Missy, but relentless gets her where she needs to be. And when Missy faces a challenge or a setback, her relentless spirit is what empowers her to learn, adapt, and move forward into the future.
 
In Relentless Spirit, Missy and her parents, D.A. and Dick Franklin, share the story of how Missy became the athlete she is today, a six-time Olympic medalist, five of them gold. Since her Olympic debut in London’s 2012 games—when Missy was just seventeen—people who have met the Franklins or seen them on TV have wondered what it was like to raise such a champion. What was the training like? How did Missy handle school? How did the family find the right facilities, coaches, and support network? 
 
The story that Missy, and her parents, share inside is both inspiring and heartwarming, explaining how she became both a legendary athlete and a happy and confident woman, something they accomplished by doing things their own way and making the right choices for their family, which includes Missy’s faith journey, something she writes about with inspirational candor.
 
Including the highs, the tough moments, and everything in-between, Relentless Spirit tells the story of a woman—and a family—full of love, heart, faith, and resilience.

On My Radar:

A Single Happened Thing
by Daniel Paisner
Relegation Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

“I would never witness anything interesting. I would never write anything beyond memos and flap copy and travel itineraries. I would simply love my wife and my daughters and hold them close and continue to take in meaningless midweek doubleheaders and mismanage the selling strategies of our midlist titles and ride along whatever middling currents I could manage until I washed up on some predictable shore.”

It’s the late Nineties on the Upper West Side and book publicist David Felb (née Felber, née Felberstein) can sense his world shrinking. He is stuck in the slow lane at “a venerable second-tier publishing house” and feeling the encroaching changes technology will bring as he struggles to maintain a bond with his wife and three young daughters. Into the void steps Fred “Sure Shot” Dunlap, a tweed-clad, waxed-mustached nineteenth-century baseball legend with still impeccable timing who died penniless and obscure and seems to need something from Felb. Or is it the other way around? Felb dutifully goes to weekly psychiatrist appointments at his wife’s insistence, but when his hard-to-reach baseball-mad teenage daughter develops her own fascination, he can feel a chance to recapture something lost.

Daniel Paisner’s enchanting new novel about neurosis, intimacy, and balancing familial needs while juggling two careers and the demands of modern life is also a charming and memorable parable about losing your mind and finding yourself in the age of anxiety.

On My Radar:

I Feel Like Going On: Life, Game, and Glory
by Ray Lewis with Daniel Paisner
Touchstone Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Ray Lewis, legendary Baltimore Ravens linebacker and one of the greatest defensive players of his generation, holds nothing back on the state of football as well as his troubled childhood, his rise to athletic greatness, the storm that threatened to ruin his NFL career, and the devastating injury that nearly cost him a final moment of glory.

A lot of folks, they know my game, but they don’t know my deal. This book right here, it tells the story of my seventeen-year NFL career. It tells of my two Super Bowls, the mark I was blessed to be able to make on the game, on the city of Baltimore. But it also tells the story of how I grew up—abandoned by my no-account father, raised with my siblings by our God-fearing, hardworking single mother. It tells how I sometimes struggled off the field. It tells of the anguish and controversy that found me away from the game.

Mostly, it tells how heartbreak can sometimes lift you to greatness and glory—if you find a way to put your focus in faith, and faith in your focus.

When I left the game, confetti raining down on me and my teammates after winning the Super Bowl, I made a promise to myself to show how the game is really played at the highest level. That’s what you’ll find in these pages—a raw, honest look at the business of football and a look behind the scenes at some of the most torturous aspects of the game. The grind of the NFL—that’s what shines through.

My deal? That grind is a given. Every player who wears an NFL uniform has to slog through the same battles just to get to the league. But it’s how you prepare for those battles that defines you—and here I hope to show how an unwavering trust in God and an unbreakable sense of purpose can lift you from tragedy to triumph. From strength to strength, man—that’s the deal.

BookSpin Giveaway!

The Fixer: The Notorious Life of a Front-Page Bail Bondsman
Ira Judelson with Daniel Paisner
Touchstone Books
Hardcover

Touchstone Books has graciously allotted several copies of THE FIXER for give away on BookSpin.  To enter to win, please retweet my tweets about the giveaway.  My twitter name is @Book_Dude. US entries only, please.

From the publisher's website:

From New York’s foremost bail bondsman with “over $30 million on the street” comes the story of a modern-day “fixer” who walks a fine line between hustler and humanitarian with clients ranging from the rich and famous to the mafia and gangs of New York.

With from-the-gut prose, Ira Judelson sheds light on the highs and lows of the bondsman life. But Judelson is no process server. He sees himself as a sort of modern day “macher”—using his juice as a bail bondsman to help friends old and new out of jams wherever he can. He is also a keenly observant and wildly charismatic insider who’s seen it all.

Prepare to be shocked, but also informed in The Fixer as Judelson reveals the unwritten laws of the courtroom and even prison—not to mention the shameless activities of his unbelievable list of clients, including former New York Giants Plaxico Burress and Lawrence Taylor; rappers Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Ja Rule, Lil’ Wayne, and DMX; comedian Katt Williams; notorious Manhattan madam Kristin Davis; and former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. You’ll see why the New York Times describes Judelson as “an inevitable entry in the BlackBerrys of New York defense lawyers, an ATM for desperate rappers, actors, athletes, executives, and madams with pocketbooks much fatter than his.”

The Fixer is a rollicking narrative that follows Judelson as he learns the ins and outs of the down-and-dirty world of bonds: which judge might let you slide, which ones have zero tolerance, which lawyers do pro bono for the right case, and the cops and DAs who believe in second chances. Judelson illuminates a world almost entirely opaque to the general public, but also entertains and informs with the inside scoop on the underbelly of the justice system.