Tom Meschery Books in Order

Written while Meschery was a professional basketball player, these poems look beyond the court at the lives of athletes. Portraits of players and images of cramped hotel rooms capture the people and experiences behind the game.

Meschery recounts his first season coaching the Carolina Cougars after retiring as a player. This diary follows his adjustment to leading a professional basketball team and the frustrations of working in the changing American Basketball Association.

These poems connect Meschery’s family history with his years in professional basketball and the classroom. Memories of revolution, war, immigration, athletic achievement, and teaching become reflections on loss and the wisdom gained through experience.

These poems examine masculinity, fatherhood, and teaching through Meschery’s observations of everyday life. Humor accompanies reflections on the men people become, drawing personal experience into questions about family roles and the work of guiding others.

This collection gathers new and previously published poems about sports. Among them, a humorous reflection on avoiding football weighs the appeal of competing against its mud, cold, and blood, contrasting it with the tidier world of golf.

Used car dealers Victor and Vincent Brovelli discover a murdered woman inside a repossessed Impala in 1968 Oakland. Indebted to the man arrested for her death, the twins investigate despite crooked police, gangsters and further killings.

Victor and Vincent Brovelli refuse to believe their older brother killed his girlfriend before taking his own life. As Victor investigates with Dila Agbo's help, threatening encounters and unsettling visions complicate their effort to restore the family's honor.