Melinda Braun – Avalanche

From the #1 New York Times bestseller Mike Lupica comes the story of baseball’s unsung hero: The Batboy

It is every baseball kid’s dream summer job: batboy for your hometown Major League team. Yet for fourteen year- old Brian, the job means more than just the chance to hang around his idols. Baseball was the job his father loved so much, in the end he couldn’t leave it. Yet he could leave his family. Now Brian sees the job as the way to win back his father. There is no winning back some people, though. Just ask Hank Bishop—once the most popular player in baseball before he was banned for using steroids. Now he is making his comeback. And an unlikely friendship slowly develops between this man in need of a family and this boy in need of a father.

Mike Lupica, king of the sports novel, delivers his most powerful and kid-friendly to date.

“A pennant winner.” –Kirkus Reviews

“Lupica. . .giv[es] his readers a behind-the-scenes look at major league sports. In this novel, he adds genuine insights into family dynamics and the emotional state of his hero.” –Booklist

“[T]his novel will undoubtedly appeal to those who equate summer with baseball, it should also win over readers who appreciate finely crafted storytelling and engagingTwo groups of teens—those waiting to be saved and those doing the saving—are in a race against time and a battle against Mother Nature after an avalanche traps them in an isolated cabin in this chilling novel.

“I promise it’ll be a weekend you’ll never forget.”

A trip like that is exactly what Matt was hoping for—a fun adventure. A daring escape. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go cross country skiing in a thrilling but dangerous pass through the Rocky Mountains. The perfect way for Matt to forget about his disappointing father and maybe let loose a little with his best friend and a group of carefree adrenaline junkies.

But then their guide takes them off-path…and straight into an avalanche. By the time they make it safely into an abandoned cabin, one skier is dead and another severely injured. Trapped with no heat, no water, and no radio the group decides to wait it out. Help will come. It has to.

Until it doesn’t. And Matt knows if they wait any longer they’ll be dead—just another bunch of victims in Mother Nature’s twisted games. Armed with only a handful of supplies and his fierce determination Matt decides to goes head-to-head with the elements, battling hypothermia, frostbite, and even mountain lions in order to find help and save them all. That is if Mother Nature doesn’t kill him first.characters.” –School Library Journal

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