Every baseball player from little league to the big leagues knows it is illegal to steal signs, yet every major league team assigns someone to do just that. Baseball thrives on trickery and deception. But as our oldest major team sport, its larcenous legacy goes much deeper than the field of play. In LARCENY AND OLD LEATHER: THE MISCHIEVOUS LEGACY OF MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL, Eldon Ham—sports lawyer, professor, and author—traces the game’s lesser-known, roguish past. His wry chapters, filled with anecdotes and statistics, expose both the hidden and the obvious cheating occurring throughout baseball’s history, from corked bats and spitballs to betting and media hyperbole. Here is a book for both seasoned baseball fans and neophytes who’d like to get a look at the game that evolved into an industry. Babe Ruth, Sammy Sosa, Pete Rose, and many other lesser known players make their appearance in this fascinating history, as Ham seeks not only to chronicle the legacy of deception inherent within the game, but also to explore why it is, and how it is, that this deception is exactly what makes baseball the most endearing of American games.

Baseball and law have intersected since the primordial days. In 1791, a Pittsfield, Massachusetts, ordinance prohibited ball playing near the town's meeting house. Ball games on Sundays were barred by a Pennsylvania statute in 1794. In 2015, a federal court held that baseball's exemption from antitrust laws applied to franchise relocations. Another court overturned the conviction of Barry Bonds for obstruction of justice. A third denied a request by rooftop entrepreneurs to enjoin the construction of a massive video screen at Wrigley Field. This exhaustive chronology traces the effects the law has had on the national pastime, both pro and con, on and off the field, from the use of copyright to protect not only equipment but also "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" to frequent litigation between players and owners over contracts and the reserve clause. The stories of lawyers like Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Branch Rickey are entertainingly instructive.

From New York Times and USA Today bestseller Lexi Blake comes a new epic-length story in her Thieves/Hunterworld… A daughter lost Summer has spent her whole life wondering about the family she left behind. On the night she came into being she only had a few moments with them. In that brief time, she reached out to her father, looking deep into his soul, and gifted him the will to go on. But now she is the one in need. Once a child made of pure magic, she is forced to live as a mortal. Her power caused great harm, and she has sworn never to let it happen again. With her friends beside her, she tries her best to help those she can. If that requires her to do a little thievery, well, she is her mother’s daughter, after all. Everything changes when a woman falls from the sky and Summer meets the handsome vampire named Marcus Vorenus. Just as her past begins to catch up with her, she might have finally met her future. A mother discovered Kelsey Owens went searching for Dev and Marcus but all she found was a trap. She was pulled through a magical painting and thrown smack into the middle of a battle on a foreign plane of existence. Luckily she’s good in a fight. Saving the woman targeted by the horde of brutal soldiers, Kelsey is shocked by her resemblance to her queen. As Kelsey investigates the mystery surrounding Summer Donovan-Quinn, she also hunts for a way back to the husbands and son she just claimed. A queen exiled Zoey Donovan-Quinn is not happy. The wizard Myrddin is back, her marriage is troubled, and she is sure those two problems are connected. But nothing is more worrying than Dev’s sudden disappearance. When she and Daniel go looking for him, they are drawn into a world thought lost to the Earth plane. Danger awaits them there, but so does the daughter they thought they would never see again. She hopes they survive their reunion. Three heroines. One mystery. And an ending that will change the Thieves world forever…

A powerful cross-generational story in which survivors of eras gone by pass the torch to a new generation of Americans faced with a different kind of conflict. The book's characters find themselves confronted with a diabolical and elisive enemy that knows no national boundary and uses unspeakable tactics.

Elliot Serlin is having the worst week of his life. First, he learns that he has lost his entire savings, including his son's college tuition, to the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. Then he stumbles upon a file at work marked SECRET and learns he is going to lose his job. Desperate to avoid financial ruin, and unwilling to tell his wife for fear she'll leave him, Elliot sets out planning an elaborate, if not quite foolproof, art heist. Along the way, he will recruit a salsa-dancing ex-con, a 19-year-old hacker, his best friend, and his wife's best friend who, it turns out, has eyes for him. Not least among the seemingly insurmountable obstacles Elliot must overcome is his own ego.

FBI agent, John Blaine, is launched into a web of international intrigue when his drug investigation turns up high-tech military smugglers. His enemy: legendary KGB Colonel Konev whose crack team of former Spetznaz operate as mercenaries to the highest bidder - a member of the Chinese Politburo seeking power. Konev's advantage is a miniature lie detector - Codename: Thunder - stolen from the American President and used against him during a world crisis. A rogue submarine is sinking ships in the South China Sea, drawing in China, Japan and America toward a nuclear confrontation. From America's nuclear Silent Service to her Carrier Battle Groups, the halls of the Forbidden City to the cities across America, Blaine runs against the clock to stop a plot for nuclear war and world domination. Michael Mandaville is a writer and filmmaker. His extensive interest in National Security, Geopolitics and History comes together in "Stealing Thunder" - based upon strategic assessments of an inevitable conflict with Communist China. He received his MFA in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California.