Recommendations based on "Outing the Quarterback"

Random Family tells the American outlaw saga lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour, gold-drenched drug dealers, and street-corner society. With an immediacy made possible only after ten years of reporting, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses the reader in the mind-boggling intricacies of the little-known ghetto world. She charts the tumultuous cycle of the generations, as girls become mothers, mothers become grandmothers, boys become criminals, and hope struggles against deprivation.Two romances thread through Random Family: the sexually charismatic nineteen-year-old Jessica's dizzying infatuation with a hugely successful young heroin dealer, Boy George, and fourteen-year-old Coco's first love with Jessica's little brother, Cesar, an aspiring thug. Fleeing from family problems, the young couples try to outrun their destinies. Chauffeurs whisk them to getaways in the Poconos and to nightclubs. They cruise the streets in Lamborghinis and customized James Bond cars. Jessica and Boy George ride the wild adventure between riches and ruin, while Coco and Cesar stick closer to the street, all four caught in a precarious dance between life and death. Friends get murdered; the DEA and FBI investigate Boy George's business activities; Cesar becomes a fugitive; Jessica and Coco endure homelessness, betrayal, the heartbreaking separation of prison, and throughout it all, the insidious damage of poverty. Together, then apart, the teenagers make family where they find it. Girls look for excitement and find trouble; boys, searching for adventure, join crews and prison gangs. Coco moves upstate to dodge the hazards of the Bronx; Jessica seeks solace in romance. Both find that love is the only place to go.A gifted prose stylist and a profoundly compassionate observer, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc has slipped behind the cold statistics and sensationalism surrounding inner-city life and come back with a riveting, haunting, and true urban soap opera that reveals the clenched grip of the streets. Random Family is a compulsive read and an important journalistic achievement, sure to take its place beside the classics of the genre.

Hilarious and true-to-life, witty, compassionate, and impossible to put down, Straight Man follows Hank Devereaux through one very bad week in this novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls. • Now the AMC Original Series Lucky Hank.William Henry Devereaux, Jr., is the reluctant chairman of the English department of a badly underfunded college in the Pennsylvania rust belt. Devereaux's reluctance is partly rooted in his character—he is a born anarchist—and partly in the fact that his department is more savagely divided than the Balkans.In the course of a single week, Devereaux will have his nose mangled by an angry colleague, imagine his wife is having an affair with his dean, wonder if a curvaceous adjunct is trying to seduce him with peach pits, and threaten to execute a goose on local television. All this while coming to terms with his philandering father, the dereliction of his youthful promise, and the ominous failure of certain vital body functions. In short, Straight Man is classic Russo—side-splitting, poignant, compassionate, and unforgettable.Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.

Daniel Carr is a man who spends his days working a dead-end job and arguing with his wife. The answer to his family's financial struggles appears to be a valuable piece of commercial property Daniel has inherited, but a promise to his late father keeps him from selling until "the time is right." Losing his job and then his wife, pushes Daniel to the edge. Then a chance meeting turns Daniel in an unexpected direction. Daniel turns to God, but will that obedience cost him everything? A story of faith, love, and redemption, Daniel's Lot portrays the struggle to follow God's direction while fighting to keep one's family and integrity alive.

While reluctantly staying with her biological father, a member of a motorcycle club, sheltered seventeen-year-old Emily falls for the youth her father asked to protect her from a rival club with a score to settle.

For use in schools and libraries only. Alfonso can't wait to play the role of Hamlet in his school's hip-hop rendition of the classic play. But as he is buying his first suit, an off-duty police officer misatkes a clothes hanger for a gun and shoots Alfoso. When Alfonso wakes up in the afterlife, he's on a ghost train guided by well-known victims of police shootings, who teach him what he needs to know about this subterranean spiritual world. Meanwhile, Alfonso's family and friends struggle with their grief and seek justice for Alfonso in the streets.

It looked like every black kid in the school was going out for the team. And then me. Pale skin, long nose, sandy brown hair, and a cowlick that won't stay down. I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't being the only white guy. Black kids play basketball. White kids wrestle. That's the way it is at Franklin High School and especially in Ray Wisniewski's neighborhood, the tight knit Polish-American town of Greenville, New Jersey. But Ray's got a passion for basketball, even after the varsity coach cuts him two years in a row. When a new coach comes on the scene, Ray's luck rebounds, but now he has to deal with Robert, the team's high scorer, a kid who hates Ray simply because he's white. As Ray fights to make his way onto the Franklin High Varsity, he finds that things are not as simple as he once thought--that a kind friend can be full of hate. A beautiful girl can be ugly inside. A well-intentioned coach can cause more harm than good. And prejudice can be defined in many ways in a world that isn't black-and-white.

Greenville County, South Carolina, a wild, lush place, is home to the Boatwright family—rough-hewn men who drink hard and shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who marry young and age all too quickly. At the heart of this astonishing novel is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a South Carolina bastard with an annotated birth certificate to tell the tale. Observing everything with the mercilessly keen eye of a child, Bone finds herself caught in a family triangle that will test the loyalty of her mother, Anney. Her stepfather, Daddy Glen, calls Bone "cold as death, mean as a snake, and twice as twisty," yet Anney needs Glen. At first gentle with Bone, Daddy Glen becomes steadily colder and more furious—until their final, harrowing encounter, from which there can be no turning back.

Tate's younger brother Indy is probably the best skateboarder in Spokane. He's also really smart though he couldn't care less about school. But when Indy clashes with his father one too many times and drops out of school, it's up to Tate to win his brother back from the seedier elements of Spokane. Can Tate convince Indy to come home, finish his high school degree, and return to skating Under the bridge with their crew?Michael Harmon's fast-paced and highly charged novel captures the enduring bond between brothers and their struggle for survival on the gritty streets of Spokane.

When the police want to link Mike to an armed robbery, proving his innocence means believing one friend but betraying another. Who's Mike going to believe? Vin, who swears he didn't have anything to do with a robbery where two people were shot? Or Sal, who saw Vin running from the store just after the shots were fired? Mike's caught between his two friends, forced into a terrible position where believing one of them might mean betraying the other. Worse, the police believe Mike himself might have been involved...

Duke Webb has run the most successful bail recovery agency in Atlanta for over twenty years. That's because he has a team of trained, competent hunters backing him up to keep his name feared on the streets. But Duke knows that nothing can go on forever. His hunters are in committed relationships and ready to settle down, and so is he. That's what leads him to start his new training program."That's the new vision for Dukes. Veterans operating and tracking behind the scenes with a new powerhouse apprehension team on the streets."Brian and Quick are the first to offer up two new recruits. Kellam Knight has studied martial arts under his sensei, Quick, since he was eight years old. A tossed-out reject from high-society, Kell has a problem fighting on the right side of the law. If he sees an injustice, he has to correct it. He doesn't have to run and cower from his enemies anymore, he's a fighter who can protect himself and others. When Quick offers Kell the opportunity to join Duke's training program, he's all in. Except he's not prepared for the straight, over-confident, extremely disciplined, sexy man Brian has recruited to be his partner. Tyrell Jenkins' world was flipped upside down when his father never returned home from his last deployment. He'd been Ty's teacher, mentor, his guide to living a righteous life as a good man. His father didn't raise him to be like every other young, stereotypical male in Atlanta. Instead, he's been taught to be respectful, to speak the language of real men. When Brian King - his father's most trusted comrade - finally comes to him with the truth, he doesn't come alone. He comes with trained men hidden in the shadows ... and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to join a brotherhood unlike any other. This novel is a part of a series but can be read as a standalone. No cliffhangers. Trigger Warning: This story contains mild acts of bond recovery agent violence