Pulitzer Prize-winning author Bernard Malamud’s first novel is still one of the best ever written about baseball. His story of a superbly gifted “natural” at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era is invested with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work.

First published in 1952, this novel has since become an American classic. Five decades later, Alfred Kazin’s

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Set in Kiev in 1911 during a period of heightened anti-Semitism, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder of a young Russian boy. Bok leaves his village to try his luck in Kiev, and after denying his Jewish identity, finds himself working for a member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society. When the boy is found nearly drained of blood in a cave, the Black Hundreds accuse the Jews of ritual murder....

Roy Hobbs was a once-promising ballplayer on his way to stardom in the big leagues. He finds his dreams shattered when a mysterious woman and a silver bullet end his career prematurely. Sixteen years later, Hobbs, armed with his childhood bat "Wonderboy," finds himself coming back to baseball, joining the roster of the lowly New York Knights. Hobbs will have to overcome physical pain and the nefarious forces around him, to lead the Knights to a pennant....