Playing for Pizza is a short novel about a fallen American football star who can no longer get work in the National Football League and whose agent, as a last resort, signs a deal for him to play for the Parma Panthers, in Parma, Italy. The quarterback's move to a small city in a foreign land leads to a series of cultural misadventures.

"I was pleasantly surprised to find real American football in Italy," says Grisham, "and as I dug deeper, a novel came together. The research was tough - food, wine, opera, football, Italian culture - but someone had to to it."

John Grisham is the author of 18 novels and the recent #1 New York Times bestselling work of nonfiction The Innocent Man. Doubleday will publish Grisham's next legal thriller in Spring 2008.

Doubleday is an imprint of the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., whose parent company is Bertelsmann AG.