Walk Me Home


Liza Kendall - 2020
    She's never gotten over abandoning Jake--and he hasn't, either.Then Charlie returns to Silverlake to stand as a bridesmaid opposite Jake in her cousin's wedding. The event sparks awkwardness, laughter, and heartbreak as they dance to the tune of the craziest bride in the west...and repair broken family bonds.Can their long-lost love find a second chance?

I Am The Secret Footballer: Lifting the Lid on the Beautiful Game


The Secret Footballer - 2012
    But whoever he is - and whoever he plays for - he is always honest, always fearless and always opinionated.Now, for the first time, he reveals everything you need to know about the hidden world of professional football - the extraordinary highs, the desperate lows....and what it's really like to do a job most of us can only dream of.

Once Friends


Z.L. Arkadie - 2018
    It’s their time to fall in love and Fate has the right partner in mind for each—soulmates these women never saw coming. Once Friends (Sonja & Jay) I never thought I’d see Jay West outside my TV screen ever again. We first met when he was eleven and I was ten. Our older sisters forced us to play together while they ran upstairs to make unsolicited phone calls to cute boys. Finally, Jay asked me what was the name of the puppet I was holding in my hands. I hung my head, embarrassed by what my sister called my perpetual state of geekdom and said, “Skinny Pig.” He said, “cool!” And from that moment on we became best friends forever—or at least I thought. Years later I developed boobs and he became a teenage heartthrob. Then came that night. Something happened between us—something unexpected and confusing. That was fifteen years ago. We hadn’t spoken since then. Now here I am, staring into his deep blue eyes. He’s no longer a boy and I’m not a girl. I’m a woman and he’s a sexy man, who’s just offered me the position of a lifetime. Should I take it? If I say no, my mundane life will go on as is. If I say yes, I’ll have to trust Jay West won’t eventually leave me high and dry like he’d done so many years ago.

Ultra


Tobias Jones - 2019
    Many groups have evolved into criminal gangs, involved in ticket-touting, drug-dealing and murder. A cross between the Hells Angels and hooligans, they're often the foot-soldiers of the Mafia and have been instrumental in the rise of the far-right. But the purist ultras say that they are are insurgents fighting against a police state and modern football. Only amongst the ultras, they say, can you find belonging, community and a sacred concept of sport. They champion not just their teams, they say, but their forgotten suburbs and the dispossessed. Through the prism of the ultras Jones crafts a compelling investigation into Italian society and its favourite sport. He writes about not just the ultras of some of Italy's biggest clubs – Juventus, Torino, Lazio, Roma and Genoa – but also about its lesser-known ones from Cosenza and Catania. He examines the sinister side of football fandom, with its violence and political extremism, but also admires the passion, wit, solidarity and style of a fascinating and contradictory subculture.

The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer


David Goldblatt - 2006
    With a new foreword for the American edition. There may be no cultural practice more global than soccer. Rites of birth and marriage are infinitely diverse, but the rules of soccer are universal. No world religion can match its geographical scope. The single greatest simultaneous human collective experience is the World Cup final. In this extraordinary tour de force, David Goldblatt tells the full story of soccer's rise from chaotic folk ritual to the world's most popular sport-now poised to fully establish itself in the USA. Already celebrated internationally, The Ball Is Round illuminates soccer's role in the political and social histories of modern societies, but never loses sight of the beauty, joy, and excitement of the game itself.

Kissing Amanda


E.A. Fry - 2013
    What was she asking me? I lifted my head and my eyes found hers. I licked my lips, hoping, yearning, needing a kiss.“May I carry your books?”When Kate Portal realized she had a knack for picking partners with rough edges, she decided to stay single. But when captivating, smooth Amanda Knight approaches her, Kate is inexplicably drawn to her. Even when Kate fears she is losing her mind just as her mother had, she is unable to turn Amanda away.And when Amanda tells her they are soul mates as well as Brightlings – beings with supernatural powers that battle the evil Darklings; a battle that has gone on for centuries – Kate has to decide if she will return to the boring life of a student or embrace the supernatural and continue kissing Amanda.Gripping and provocative, Kissing Amanda is a fast-paced, romantic fantasy that will keep you in its grip until the final page and beyond.

The Glory Game


Hunter Davies - 1972
    Author Hunter Davies was allowed unparalleled access to the inner sanctum of a top professional soccer team, the Tottenham Hotspur (Spurs), and his pen spared nothing and no one. This 30th-anniversary edition will appeal to new and enthusiastic audiences.

Nocturnals: Black Planet


Dan Brereton - 1998
    They have already ravaged his home planet, and now he has traveled to Earth to try and stop them once and for all. Once here, however, he finds that this world's inhabitants aren't all sweetness and light themselves. Some of them are busy creating freakish mutations out of their fellow man, and others are helping the invaders in their quest for domination. An outcast, Doc Horror is forced to live by the dark of night, and there he finds compatriots who must also shun the light of day. Polychrome, The Gunwitch, Starfish, Firelion, Komodo, and The Raccoon have all their share of knocks from humanity, but they want to save their homeworld anyway, and they don't care how many monsters stand in their way.

My Father And Other Working Class Football Heroes


Gary Imlach - 2005
    He knew the highlights of his father's career by heart. But when his dad died he realised they were all he knew. He began to realise, too, that he'd lost the passion for football that his father had passed down to him. In this book he faces his growing alienation from the game he was born into, as he revisits key periods in his father's career to build up a picture of his football life - and through him a whole era.‘The most emotionally charged and moving sports book I've ever read’ Daily Mail

The Indiana Jones Handbook: The Complete Adventurer's Guide


Denise Kiernan - 2008
    Complete with helpful diagrams, step-by-step instructions, and full-color photography, this thrilling guide shows readers:        •  How to identify booby traps      •  How to fend off a gang of swordsmen      •  How to ride an elephant      •  How to decipher hieroglyphs and lost languages      •  How to escape the wrath of God   . . . and dozens of other crucial skills for any archaeologist-in-training.

A Dark Grave


J.A. Souders - 2012
    Cursed.All who venture to the island disappear.But Gavin doesn't believe in such things. He is a hunter; since his father's death, he is the only one who can provide for the family. Silly rumors of ghosts aren't going to stop him from crossing the dark waters to the island in search of fresh game...

Blindsight


Adriane Leigh - 2015
    Leigh's newest mysterious hero will have you anxiously flipping pages well into the night trying to uncover his secrets." - Jay Crownover, Marked MenSometimes a single touch is all it takes to spark a wildfire. Erin Warner learned that the day she bumped into the dashing, tattooed stranger on a busy Chicago street corner. She's captivated from the moment Hunter Ellis' mystifying green eyes find hers, but there is more to him than meets the eye, including the intricately etched tattoos decorating his body that disguise horrific scars from a past he refuses to revisit. As she peels away the layers, Erin realizes that what she thought was true, never really was at all, for both of them. Now she can only hope that blind adoration for the dashing stranger didn't sign her death warrant.

Zonal Marking: The Making of Modern European Football


Michael Cox - 2019
    From the attacking flair of Real Madrid of the 50s to the defensive brilliance of the Italians in the 60s and onto the total football of the Dutch in the 70s, the European leagues have been where the game has most evolved and taken its biggest steps forward. And over the last three decades, since the rebranding of the Champions League in 1992, that pattern has continued unabated, with each major European footballing nation playing its part in how the game’s tactics have developed.From the intelligent use of space displayed by the phenomenal Ajax team of the early 90s, to the dominance of the highly strategic Italian league in the late 90s and onto the technical wizardry of Barcelona’s tiki-taka, the European game continues to reinvent the tactical dimension of the game, creating blueprints which both club and national teams around the world strive to follow.In Zonal Marking, Michael Cox brilliantly investigates and analyses the major leagues around Europe over specific time periods and demonstrates the impact each has made on how the game is now played. Highly entertaining and packed full of wonderful anecdotes, this is the first book of its kind to take an overview of modern European football, and lays bare just how much the international language of football can be shaped by a nation’s unique identity.

Little Star


Andi Watson - 2006
    He's a thoroughly modern "involved" Dad. Watch him stagger through the pee, the poo, and the puke in a sleep-deprived haze. Observe as he becomes a second class citizen in his X-chromosome controlled domicile. And feel as Simon tries to juggle career ambitions and his family in an act worthy of the best circus performers. No, you're not alone; this is what it's like for everyone.

Down the Rabbit Hole


Charlotte Abel - 2012
    (Approximately 7,000 words)Reliving the night before Jonathan and Franklin leave for Basic Training.You do not need to read "Down the Rabbit Hole" before enjoying "River's Recruit."