The importance of competition and winning in a sport play a major part in On the Devil's Court. Joe Faust is willing to sell his soul to the devil for one good basketball season. A novel about another young man who risks his life to be a winner is Stephen Hoffius's Winners and Losers (1993). Daryl, a high school athlete and talented runner has a heart attack during a race. His career seems to end there, but Daryl is determined to go on, pushing himself harder and harder in each race, until his heart fails and he collapses and dies. Another writer who is much concerned with the ethics involved in winning and losing in sports is David Klass whose novel, Breakaway Run (1987), deals with Tony, a soccer player and exchange student at a Japanese school. Different cultural concepts about what is important in sports collide when...