New releases 4/8: Four backlist Regency romances plus a baseball classic

It's a good week for all you baseball fans! The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers is now available in ebook edition. 

Widely considered to be one of the greatest minds in the history of the game, Bill James has changed the way we think about the sport of baseball.  In this chronicle of field generals, strategists, and occasional cannon fodder, James writes with piercing insight about the men who hold what may be the most important spot in the dugout. The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers is a thought-provoking, entertaining, and seminal guide to a vital part of the national pastime, written by one of its most groundbreaking iconoclasts.

And for all your romance readers, we're releasing four Regency romances from author Mona Prevel, for the first time in ebook edition! Read these delightful romps that RT Book Reviews dubbed "clever tales[s] with plenty of sparkling wit." 

Freebie-Friday: THE MOMENT BEFORE by Suzy Vitello

Happy Freebie-Friday! Today's freebie is for all of you YA lovers! For today only, you can add Suzy Vitello's The Moment Before to your #readmore2014 list for free!

"Don't get me wrong. I loved my sister. I never, not once, wished her dead."

Brady and Sabine Wilson are sisters born eleven months apart, but they couldn't be more different. Popular Sabine, the head cheerleader dating the high school hunk, seems to have all the luck, while her younger, artsy sister "Brady Brooder" is a loner who prefers the sidelines to the limelight.

After Sabine dies in a horrific cheerleading accident, grief unravels Brady and her family. Once recognized for her artistic talent, 17-year-old Brady finds herself questioning the value of everything she once held dear. Her best friend betrays her. Her parents' marriage is crumbling. And the boy everyone blames for the accident seems to be her only ally in the search for answers in the wake of her sister's death. As an unlikely friendship emerges, Brady learns more about Sabine - and love - than she bargained for.

Available for free on Amazon, Kobo, and the iBookstore.

If you love The Moment Before, then you'll be thrilled to hear this exciting news from Suzy. Here's what she had to say about the future of The Moment Before:

As a mom, I’m used to shepherding loved ones through various milestones. First words, first crush, first job. Like so many things, parenthood is a dynamic continuum.

I have a similar relationship with my characters.

From the moment I heard Brady’s voice in my head, I realized she was a character I wanted around for a while. When I finished writing The Moment Before, I knew I’d follow Brady and Connor into adulthood. Perhaps like some of my readers, I wanted to know what happened with them. Would they become a couple? Would their relationship grow into something more than shared love for Sabine?

Well, curiosity got the better of me, and I’m thick into the next Brady and Connor book, but it doesn’t pick up right where Moment left off. In fact, it’s four years later. As in: Brady and Connor are no longer teens.

You may have heard of this category called New Adult? Maybe that’s where this new book will slot. There’s romance (a messy love triangle, in fact); there’s the concerns of newly independent adults – career versus college, where to live, who to love; and most importantly for my characters, that tension between the past and future.

I’m excited to age my characters into their twenties for this next book because, at least where I live, there are so many options for a person coming into adulthood. Creative options. Not just career-wise, but living situations, partnerships, ways to explore who you are. And yet, certain things remain the same: jealousy, insecurities, desire for love.

These past years I’ve watched my kids (four of them, in my blended family) navigate the twenties and our times, and it amazes me the blend of traditional and non-traditional routes they’ve taken. I am exploring those life decisions with Brady and Connor, while they continue to flirt with their romantic feelings for each other. Right from the get-go, there’s another woman in Connor’s life, and fueling the conflict is the latest predicament Brady finds herself in. Intrigued? Good!

As they did in Moment, Brady and Connor will take risks, make mistakes, and find themselves in a particular type of danger. Plus, there’s an orchard, lots of dogs, and a glimpse of today’s “wild west.”

But back to The Moment Before. Because it is spring, and that is the season in which Moment takes place, I’m running a little giveaway this month. This has been such a hard winter for so many; blossoms on the trees are more than ever a welcome sight. I invite you all to capture the moment of the spirit of April. Send me photos or sketches or some other interpretation of blossoms this month, and I’ll post them here: http://www.tumblr.com/blog/momentbeforeblossoms. I’ll choose a winner on May 1^st, and that person will get a $25 gift certificate for art supplies. (You can also post your blossom art to my twitter-feed calling out @suzy_vitello and #blossommoment).

Follow Suzy on Wattpad!

New release 4/1: take me out to the ball game!

Sportswriter Mike Shropshire brings to life 1970's major league baseball in Seasons in Hell, out today in eBook edition!

You think your team is bad?  In this landmark work on one of the most tortured franchises in baseball, one reporter discovers that nine innings can feel like an eternity.

In early 1973, gonzo sportswriter Mike Shropshire agreed to cover the Texas Rangers for the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram, not realizing that the Rangers were arguably the worst team in baseball history. Seasons in Hell is a riotous, candid, irreverent behind-the-scenes account in the tradition of The Bronx Zoo and Ball Four, following the Texas Rangers from Whitey Herzog’s reign in 1973 through Billy Martin’s tumultuous tenure. Offering wonderful perspectives on dozens of unique (and likely never-to-be-seen-again) baseball personalities, Seasons in Hell recounts some of the most extreme characters ever to play the game and brings to life the no-holds-barred culture of major league baseball in the mid-seventies. 

Download your copy of Seasons in Hell on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and the iBookstore. 



Also available today exclusively on Uni Watch for a limited time: The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers is now available as an eBook, specially priced at $2.99.

The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers is a thought-provoking, entertaining, and seminal guide to a vital part of the national pastime, written by one of its most groundbreaking iconoclasts.

Newsweek once called him "The guru of baseball," and Bill James, for nearly forty years, has led the vanguard of how we measure the game.  From Sabermetrics to his Baseball Abstracts, James has influenced even the casual fan all the way up to the top brass. Somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, however, is the manager, and Bill James has penned a guide on some of the most innovative and renowned men to ever hold that position. 

Some of the game's greatest managers have been Hall-of-Fame players who put down a bat and picked up a lineup card: Frank Robinson, Mel Ott, Joe Cronin, Tris Speaker, Rogers Hornsby.  Others have achieved greatness from their ability to assemble legendary teams: Billy Martin, Tommy Lasorda, Connie Mack, Joe McCarthy, Dick Williams, Leo Durocher.  Here, Bill James explores the history of the manager, and its evolution from 1870-1990, in a decade-by-decade chronicle, examining the successes, the failures, and what baseball fans can learn from both.