When Muhammad Ali met Joe Frazier in Manila for their third fight, their rivalry had spun out of control. The Ali-Frazier matchup had become a madness, inflamed by the media and the politics of race. When the "Thrilla in Manila" was over, one man was left with a ruin of a life; the other was battered to his soul. Mark Kram covered that fight for Sports Illustrated in an award-winning article. Now his riveting book reappraises the boxers -- who they are and who they were. And in a voice as powerful as a heavyweight punch, Kram explodes the myths surrounding each fighter, particularly Ali. A controversial, no-holds-barred account, Ghosts of Manila ranks with the finest boxing books ever written.

A brilliant and often brutal account of the dual lives of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier and the long-running feud between them. Be prepared to have your previously held opinions challenged, then shattered, by this thought-provoking study. Set against the backdrop of the 'Thrilla in Manila', the epic 1975 battle which many aficionados consider the greatest heavyweight fight ever, Ghosts of Manila offers a dramatic insight into the 30-year feud between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. Celebrated American sports journalist Mark Kram has spent nearly the same amount of time preparing to write this book - and the result is a hugely impressive piece of research and social history. When Ali and Frazier met in Manila for the third act of their trilogy of fights, their rivalry had spun out of control. More than a clash of personalities and fighting styles, the rivalry, inflamed by the media, took on overtones of politics and race. But in the aftermath of Manila the hype no longer mattered: one man was left with a ruin of a life; the other was battered to his soul. Frazier is now in an advanced state of blindness, still consumed by hate; Ali's once agile and powerful body is withered by the grip of Parkinson's disease. Kram's book begins with the boxers themselves - who they are and were. They began as friends, with a genuine, if grudging, respect for each other. They were turned into enemies as much by pride as forces over which they had no control. Weaving together past and present, Kram explodes the hagiography surrounding both fighters, particularly Ali, and presents the reader with the rarest of literary achievements: a psychologically riveting study of two heroes, many myths, and the reality behind it all. No one who reads Ghosts of Manila will ever think of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in the same way again ...

Part-travelogue, the novel chronicles a Third World country gone amok. It is told through the eyes of John Prideaux, a British film maker in the Philippines. A tale of corruption, sexual exploitation, slums and sweatshops. By the author of The Great Deep.

Manila is not for the faint of heart. Population: over ten million and growing by the minute. Climate: hot, humid and prone to torrential monsoon rains of biblical proportions. The ultimate femme fatale, she's complicated and mysterious, with a tainted, painful past. The perfect, torrid setting for noir. Edited by Dogeaters (Penguin, 1991) author and National Book Award Nominee Jessica Hagedorn, and featuring original stories from a stunning group of multi-award-winning authors.

Winner of the 2013 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, Like Any Normal Day is a profound, powerful narrative of a golden boy's tragedy, a woman's unlived life, and a brother's complicated devotion. In the mid-1970s, brothers Buddy and Jimmy Miley were close, both on the verge of impressive athletic careers. A promising high school quarterback, Buddy's potential was cut short by an injury that left him quadriplegic. Immobile and imprisoned in his body for decades, Buddy would watch life pass by from his wheelchair, living at home under his mother's and brother's care, and wondering what his life could have been. Buddy and Jimmy visited special hospitals and traveled to Lourdes in search of a miracle, never losing hope as they searched for a cure. But as Buddy suffered increasing pain, and also realized that he would never be able to walk again—and never prove himself capable of being loved by Karen, a woman he'd first met in high school—he asked Jimmy to help him end his life. Beautifully written, both heart-wrenching and hopeful, Mark Kram Jr.'s Like Any Normal Day explores the important bonds between families and the depths of what we're willing to do for those we love. Like Any Normal Day is the winner of the 2013 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing.

TEEN VOGUE BOOK CLUB PICK • A Harvard freshman becomes obsessed with her schizophrenic brother’s suicide. Then she starts hearing voices. “A rich, intricately plotted thriller . . . Serritella, who is a Harvard grad herself, writes about the campus with an insider’s savvy.”—Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post “Every time I thought I knew where Ghosts of Harvard was heading, I turned out to be wrong. Part mystery, part ghost story, part psychological thriller, this novel is all entertainment.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult Cadence Archer arrives on Harvard’s campus desperate to understand why her brother, Eric, a genius who developed paranoid schizophrenia took his own life there the year before. Losing Eric has left a black hole in Cady’s life, and while her decision to follow in her brother’s footsteps threatens to break her family apart, she is haunted by questions of what she might have missed. And there’s only one place to find answers. As Cady struggles under the enormous pressure at Harvard, she investigates her brother’s final year, armed only with a blue notebook of Eric’s cryptic scribblings. She knew he had been struggling with paranoia, delusions, and illusory enemies—but what tipped him over the edge? Voices fill her head, seemingly belonging to three ghosts who passed through the university in life, or death, and whose voices, dreams, and terrors still echo the halls. Among them is a person whose name has been buried for centuries, and another whose name mankind will never forget. Does she share Eric’s illness, or is she tapping into something else? Cady doesn’t know how or why these ghosts are contacting her, but as she is drawn deeper into their worlds, she believes they’re moving her closer to the truth about Eric, even as keeping them secret isolates her further. Will listening to these voices lead her to the one voice she craves—her brother’s—or will she follow them down a path to her own destruction?

Set in a fascinating alternative world in which ghosts are real, the United States never came into existence and Russia is still ruled by the Romanovs, this sequel to Of Tangible Ghosts and The Ghost of the Revelator continues the adventures of semi-retired spy Dr. Johan Eschbach. His lovely wife Llysette du Boise, a refugee from the burning remains of France and a world-famous novelist, has been invited to provide a command performance for the Russian Imperial household. Johan accompanies her, allowing him to work on the oil concession in Russian Alaska that Columbia so desperately needs and do some spying on the side. Johan's espionage is carried out against the backdrop of the famous white nights of St. Petersburg, the nearly Arctic midsummer when the sun barely dips below the horizon and the sky seems to dissolve in ivory light. But even the oil shortage will fade to insignificance when Johan discovers what new weapons technology the Russians are developing, a threat even more fearsome than the atomic bombs of Austro-Hungary. Working in the tradition of Gordon R. Dickson and Poul Anderson for hard-edged adventure with sophisticated social and political dimensions, Modesitt provides a unique blend of speculation and intrigue that brings the trilogy to a rousing end.