Grandmaster

New
Paperback
2015
$15.70

Freshman Daniel Pratzer gets a chance to prove himself when the chess team invites him and his father to a tournament. Daniel can't understand why his teammates want so badly for them to participate. Then he finds out the truth: As a teen, his father was one of the most promising young players in America, but the pressures of the game pushed him too far. Now, thirty years later, Mr. Pratzer returns to the game to face down an old competitor and the same dark demons that lurk in the corners of a mind stretched by the demands of the game. Daniel was looking for acceptance but the secrets he uncovers about his father will force him to make some surprising moves himself.

Synopsis

Freshman Daniel Pratzer gets a chance to prove himself when the chess team invites him and his father to a tournament. Daniel can't understand why his teammates want so badly for them to participate. Then he finds out the truth: As a teen, his father was one of the most promising young players in America, but the pressures of the game pushed him too far. Now, thirty years later, Mr. Pratzer returns to the game to face down an old competitor and the same dark demons that lurk in the corners of a mind stretched by the demands of the game. Daniel was looking for acceptance but the secrets he uncovers about his father will force him to make some surprising moves himself.

$15.70

Quantity

10 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 253
Edition: Reprint
Publisher: Square Fish
Published: 01 Oct 2015
ISBN 10: 1250063019
ISBN 13: 9781250063014
Book Overview: This insider's view of a crushingly intense tournament brings the head-spinning pressures of high-level chess competition to life.

Media Reviews

* Like Searching for Bobby Fischer, this novel about competitive chess encapsulates the intensity of the game and the players who become obsessed with it . . . [An] emotionally taut story. --Publishers Weekly, starred review

Drama unfolds deliberately . . . building up to an exciting, climactic endgame . . . Smart, real, and full of feeling. --School Library Journal

Fast-paced, inspired writing makes this perfect for fans of John Feinstein's The Sports Beat series. --Booklist

Klass is in excellent control of his plot, moving swiftly to the tournament action . . . and steadily closing in on the final showdown. --Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Author Bio

David Klass is the author of many young adult novels, including You Don't Know Me, Losers Take All, and Grandmaster. He is also a Hollywood screenwriter, having written more than twenty-five action screenplays, including Kiss the Girls, starring Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd; Walking Tall, starring The Rock; and Desperate Measures, starring Michael Keaton and Andy Garcia. Klass grew up in a family that loved literature and theater-his parents were both college professors and writers-but he was a reluctant reader, preferring sports to books. But he started loving the adventure stories his parents would bring home from the library-particularly Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson and Alexandre Dumas. After his sister twice won a story contest in Seventeen magazine, Klass decided he would win it too, and when he was a senior in high school, he did, publishing his first story, Ringtoss, in the magazine. He studied at Yale University, where he won the Veech Award for Best Imaginative Writing. He taught English in Japan, and wrote his first novel, The Atami Dragons, about that experience. He now lives in New York with his wife and two children.