"With a bolt of lightning on my kicks...The court is SIZZLING.  My sweat in DRIZZLING.  Stop all that quivering.  Cuz tonight I'm delivering," announces 12-year-old Josh Bell.  He and his twin brother Jordan are awesome on the court.  Josh has basketball in his blood, but he's got mad beats, too, that tell his family's story in verse in this fast and furious novel.  Josh and Jordan must come to grips with growing up on and off the court to realize...

Finley, an unnaturally quiet boy who is the only white player on his high school's varsity basketball team, lives in a dismal Pennsylvania town that is ruled by the Irish mob, and when his coach asks him to mentor a troubled African American student who has transferred there from an elite private school in California, he finds that they have a lot in common in spite of their apparent differences.

Samuel and his younger brother, Joshua, are free black boys living in an orphanage during the Civil War, but when Samuel takes the blame for his brother's prank, he is sent South, given a new name, and sold into slavery--and somehow he must survive both captivity and the war, to find his way back to his brother.

Twelve-year-old Nick loves baseball so after a year in the hospital fighting polio and with a brace on one leg, Nick takes a job with the team for which his father is catcher and gets to see the great pitcher, Satchel Paige, play during the 1935 season. Includes historical notes.

"Otto and Sheed, The Legendary Alston Boys of Logan County, are ordered by Missus Nedraw to bring a fugitive to justice in a world that mirrors their own but has its own rules"--