Mickey Mantle Novel To Be Published

A racy novel about baseball great Mickey Mantle has found a new home after being canceled in the wake of publisher Judith Regan's firing.

Lyons Press, an imprint of Globe Pequot Press that publishes many sports books, will release Peter Golenbock's "7: The Mickey Mantle Novel" on April 3, with a planned first printing of 250,000.

"Peter is a terrific storyteller with a great track record, and we're proud to have him on our list," Lyons associate publisher Eugene Brissie said Wednesday in a statement. " '7: The Mickey Mantle Novel' is a book that absolutely deserves to be published."

Golenbock has written numerous other books, including "Red Sox Nation," "Personal Fouls" and "Dynasty."

Regan's ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins, was supposed to publish the Mantle book in March. But Regan had been strongly criticized for her attempted O.J. Simpson project, "If I Did It," and "7" was endangered after family members and former teammates of Mantle's objected to the novel, which includes an imagined tryst with Marilyn Monroe.

After Regan was fired in December, her imprint was disbanded and the Mantle book called off.