Gift of the Bambino

It is 1914. A young boy takes in a baseball game with his father and sees a tall, lanky Babe Ruth hit his first home run as a professional. The ball sails through the sky and drops into the bay just beyond the fence. Thus begins an epic tale of hopes, dreams, and fantasy that the boy takes with him on the journey of his life. He shares it with no one as he toils through triumph and tragedy, and not until he finally confides in his own grandson some two generations later is his struggle vindicated.

In Gift of the Bambino, that grandson's coming-of-age as a young man and his grandfather's worshipping of Babe Ruth when he himself was a boy are woven together in a web of fantasy, ambition, and unswerving belief in an ideal. The poignant relationship they share culminates in a mutual acceptance of morality and the realization that myth and reality are intertwined. And when death is at the door, past and present meet in a dramatic rendezvous with the mystical home run ball from 1914.

Gift of the Bambino is a baseball novel that tugs fiercely at the heart and refuses to let go. It looks back into the early days of baseball, when the game was just a game and the thrills of a home-run everlasting.

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Duty: The Life of a Cop

Julian Fantino is the highest-profile police officer Canada has ever produced. In a remarkable career spanning almost forty years, he has led four police forces and continues to leave a huge imprint on law enforcement, not only in this country but right around the world.

This candid and hard-hitting memoir of his life—from his humble beginnings in Italy to his move to Canada and his eventual rise through the police ranks, from a street cop on the beat to top cop in the biggest city in the country—recounts his experiences as a rookie fresh out of police college and his time in the drug squad, homicide, and other areas of policing.

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Victims: The Orphans of Justice

Victims: The Orphans of Justice was an investigative look at Canada's criminal justice system, from the perspective of its victims. It was an eye-opener, not only in terms of the poor treatment of victims and their survivors, but in terms of how the National Parole Board and Correctional Services Canada operated. The book led to a weekly column called Justice For All in Toronto's Sunday Sun newspaper.

The book relates the story of Don Sullivan, an ex-cop whose eldest daughter was murdered by an offender just released from penitentiary on mandatory supervision. Sullivan was instrumental in forming a national organization called Victims of Violence, which sought to provide services for crime victims and to bring about new rights for victims.

Books in the works...