Vertigo: One Football Fan's Fear of Success


John Crace - 2011
    John Crace and Spurs were made for each other. But then the team started to play like possible champions. For most fans, these are the glory moments they dream about. For Crace they just opened a new dimension of anxiety: the fear of success. Crace has supported Spurs for 40 years. His wife thinks he suffers from a psychiatric disorder, but fandom is not only one of the ways he negotiates his relationships, it also helps him make some sense of his life. Vertigo is the story of why fandom that starts out in boyish hope always ends in dark comedy.

Messi, Neymar, Ronaldo: Head to Head with the World's Greatest Players


Luca Caioli - 2014
    With exclusive insights from their friends, families, teammates and managers – including interviews with managers Luiz Felipe Scolari and Vicente del Bosque – Caioli presents a unique insight into what makes a modern player not just successful, but truly great.

The Beautiful Game? Searching for the Soul of Football


David Conn - 2004
    An outstanding, thought-provoking study of the state of modern professional football.

The Franchise Babe


Dan Jenkins - 2008
    Lately he’s been bored out of his mind writing about the PGA Tour, which he says has become “Tiger and a bunch of slugs playing pushover courses.” So he decides to check out what he calls “the Lolitas,” a new breed of young chicks on the LPGA Tour. Jack chooses as a magazine subject Ginger Clayton, a fiery eighteen-year old with flowing blond locks, legs up to here, and a personality that combines mischief with confidence. With her killer looks and killer game, Ginger looks very much like the kind of star who can take the LPGA to the next level of excitement and acceptance. She is, indeed, The Franchise Babe, and everyone seems to want a part of her.Jack’s interest in Ginger’s career might have something to do with her mother, Thurlene Clayton, a knockout herself who looks plenty okay in a jacked-up mini-to use Jack’s description of her outfit. As Ginger shows her grit on the ladies’ tour, the greedy hordes looking to benefit from the kid’s talent and personality aren’t the ones who worry Thurlene-and Jack-the most. Someone is trying to knock Ginger out of the competition-permanently.Jenkins captures the growing buzz around the Franchise Babe and all the insane and hilarious things that happen when the sports world anoints someone new to the throne of super-stardom. Along the way, Jenkins issues bawdy, dead-on takedowns of selfish sports moms, gasbag corporate sponsors, adventurous promoters, sleazy sports agents, point-missing magazine editors, and all the other modern annoyances that make life hard for a guy who, as they say in Texas, is just tryin' to get by without gettin' hurt.

Fearless: How Leicester City Shook the Premier League, and What it Means for Sport


Jonathan Northcroft - 2016
    Out on the pitch a lone brass player sounds the haunting Post Horn Gallop, for 80 years the home players' entrance tune. Spines tingle. Air is gulped into opposition lungs. Game time, time to begin the chase. Burning fox eyes peer down from between the decks of one of the stands. On the stadium's outside wall a royal blue LCD display says #Fearless.Welcome to Leicester City. They were always a club with a difference but in 2015-16 they created a story that in modern football stands unique. Who could believe it: from relegation certainties to champions of England? It was when, on behalf of every small club, dreams were hunted at the King Power, a season where the impossible became merely quarry.5,000-1 shots when the campaign started, Leicester's transformation has been remarkable. This is the most incredible cast of written-offs, grafters, misfits and journeymen, coming together in a special time and place to simultaneously have the season of their lives. Fearless will document Leicester's hunt of their impossible dream. It will tell the greatest football tale of the Premier League era, in loving detail, with the inside track. Now that Leicester have gone all the way and won the title, it is the best story in world sports - for years.Premier League champions. The side who'd been adrift at the bottom 12 months previously, who's started the season as relegation favourites, whose manager was favourite to be the first one sacked once the campaign got underway. A League One side only seven seasons previously. A squad of �500,000 and �1m men. Leicester. Ridiculous. Miraculous. Fearless.

The Title: The Story of the First Division


Scott Murray - 2017
    They may even have a point. But to build something so successful, so popular, so inescapable, you've got to have mighty strong foundations.Prior to 1992, the old First Division was England's premier prize. Its rich tapestry winds back to 1888 and the formation of the Football League. A grand century-long tradition in danger of being lost in the wake of Premier League year zero.No more! In The Title Scott Murray tells the lively, cherry-picked story of English football through the prism of the First Division. Rich with humour yet underpinned with solid research, this is a glorious meander across our national sport's varied terrain.With as much about Burnley, Wolves, West Brom and Portsmouth as the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United, we learn the less well-known stories the sport has to tell, such as the plight of Glossop, the smallest club to ever play top-flight football, and final day drama involving Huddersfield and Cardiff that knocks Michael Thomas into a cocked hat. We bask in the managerial genius of Tom Watson, the bowler-hatted Victorian Mourinho; celebrate the joy of the Busby Babes; discover the shameless showmanship of George Allison; embark on righteous escapades with Hughie Gallacher; and meet some old favourites in Don Revie, Bill Shankly, Alex Ferguson and Brian Clough.At turns exciting, surprising, witty and bittersweet, The Title is a highly informed, fresh and affectionate love-letter to the English game, and a delight for any football fan.

Pass Judgment: Inside the Seattle Seahawks' Super Bowl XLIX Season and the Play That Dashed a Dream (Kindle Single)


Jerry Brewer - 2016
    Instead of hiding from national ridicule, Coach Pete Carroll embraced the pain and used it as an opportunity to teach his ultra-competitive team about the quality he inspires the most in people: persistence. Pass Judgment is a poignant portrait of grit, an inside look at the Seahawks' taxing 2014 journey to the Super Bowl, the bond it restored, the heartache of losing and the arduous process to recover. How do you live with the worst error of your life? This is the story of how a proud team, led by a relentless coach, digested failure.Jerry Brewer is a sports columnist for The Washington Post. Before joining The Post in June 2015, he worked for The Seattle Times, where he wrote opinions about the entire Seattle sports scene for nearly nine years and chronicled the Seahawks' rise to NFL prominence under Pete Carroll. Before Seattle, he worked at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., The Orlando Sentinel and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He has received awards for his work from numerous journalism organizations, including the American Association of Sunday and Features Editors, Associated Press Sports Editors, Society of Professional Journalists, Best of the West and National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. He lives in Arlington, Va., with his wife, Karen, and sons, Miles and Austin.Cover design by Adil Dara

A Story Between The Lines


Santhosh Sivaraj - 2019
    Nila, an innocent girl with a beautiful heart, loved the world with all she had. Love sparkled in the mountains, when Adi's adrenaline lost to Nila’s serenity.Life struck them hard when Adi woke up to a rude shock. His Nila had disappeared and his memories were lost in an accident that Adi cannot recollect. With memories betraying him, he trusts his love to lead him to Nila.Running against time, he felt truth closing in from all directions. The more answers he got, the further his destination became. Adi dared the distance, which was a war-torn land, engraved with scars.Can Adi’s journey lead to his destination? Or was the journey a destination by itself?

The Comeback: How Larry Ellison's Team Won the America's Cup (Kindle Single)


G. Bruce Knecht - 2016
    New Zealand needed just one more win. Oracle ultimately beat back the odds in what's been called the greatest comeback in sport. But was it? G. Bruce Knecht set out to investigate how Oracle turned things around and, most particularly, the source of extra horsepower that seemed to come from nowhere during the final races. What he discovered was that the team was using a sailing technique that was prohibited under the rules. The Comeback is a pulse-pounding account of Oracle's desperate stop-at-nothing campaign.G. Bruce Knecht, a former staff reporter and foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, is the author of three books, including The Proving Ground: The Inside Story of the 1998 Sydney to Hobart Race. Larry Ellison was a major character in that book as well and it explains how his experience in the race led to his pursuit of the America's Cup. A sailor himself, Knecht raced across the Atlantic in 2005 on the yacht that broke the 100-year-old transatlantic race record.Cover design by Charles Rue Woods.

Loving a Jamaican Bad Boy


Tinera Latoya - 2016
    They're in Jamaica, they are having fun and find new love interest.A trip that was supposed to be two weeks turned into a summer long trip, when the girls meet their love interest.Minah is the shy girl who doesn't know her beauty. She’s been the awkward pretty girl all her life. She's never gone to a party or even had a boyfriend. Minah is all about her school work and on the path to become a biomedical engineer. When Minah meets Kymani in Jamaica, she is letting go of the shy girl and breaking out her shell thanks to Kymani. Minah is slowly falling for him the more time she spends with him.Kymani is a girl’s dream. He is what every woman wants. Being the top Kingpin in Jamaica is the life he is living. Kymani have everything he ever wants in life, until he meets Minah. She is young, beautiful and rare to Kymani. He sets his eyes on her and on a mission to make her his. What was supposed to be a graduation trip to Jamaica, turns into love at first sight. Kymani would stop at nothing to have Minah as his woman.Back in America is Minah secret lover Jay, and older cousin of Keyariah. Jay has been in love with Minah, when she was the ugly ducking and not knowing her true beauty. Now that she has found her confidence and self esteem, Jay is willing to do anything to have her all to himself by any means necessary. Will Jay just let Minah slip out of his hands to Kymani, or will he fight for her love?Keyariah has been the wild girl all her life. Boys, partying, and more boys been her motto. She can't keep a steady relationship to save her life, and this has her second guessing herself. Is she worthy of a good man? Bad relationship after bad relationship has been her problem for a while. When she goes to Jamaica she falls for Tariq, best friend of Kymani. Will Keyariah find the perfect man in Tariq, or will he turn out to be like the other bad apples?Join Minah and Keyariah on their wicked roller coaster of finding that happy ever after love.

My Atlanta Kingpin


Tashay Nashay - 2016
    She introduces sweet little Kyra into the exotic, which puts her marriage at risk. In the meantime Kyra runs into Atlanta’s kingpin, Meek and is faced with options that may ruin her family. Will she give into temptation or will she choose to stay with her unloving husband? The drama unravels as secrets and unexpected feelings start to develop. When your heart hurts, there’s no telling what you would do, even if that means ending a life or two.

Lil Mama Fell in Love with a Hitta


Saja Jay - 2017
    Blood couldn't make these women more of a family. When they are taken in by the infamous Big Red, she provides them with the skills needed in order to survive the streets. But only Gia can see Big Red for who she really is. Will the other two continue to be blinded by Big Red's thirst for money, or will they soon see what Gia's been saying from the beginning? Bilal, Zohran, and Waseem are three powerful brothers who filled their father's big shoes, making them the kings of the streets. But real men know when it's time to bow out gracefully and hang their guns up. The only problem is that Bilal doesn't have the same vision that his brothers have. Could they convince him that the best way to survive the streets is to get in and get out, or will the streets teach Bilal a lesson he'll never forget? Find out what happens when three brothers cross paths with three beautiful sisters. Will they collide head on, or will these lil mamas fall in love with some hittas?

Ratchet Wives Club: Episode 4


Chanel Q. - 2016
    Alliances are made. Trust is Broken. And more secrets are revealed. Are you ready for the next wave of drama?

Suarez (Classic Football Heroes) - Collect Them All! (Ultimate Football Heroes)


Matt Oldfield - 2017
    Luis was too quick. Before they could move, he had pounced on the ball and fired a shot into the top corner.' Suarez follows the Uruguayan's winding path from love-struck youngster to Liverpool hero to Barcelona star. Grabbing goals and headlines along the way, this is the inspiring story of how the world's deadliest striker made his mark.Ultimate Football Heroes is a series of biographies telling the life-stories of the biggest and best footballers in the world and their incredible journeys from childhood fan to super-star professional player. Written in fast-paced, action-packed style these books are perfect for all the family to collect and share.

Feelin' Some Type of Way


K.C. Mills - 2016
    She lives her life by her own rules and that includes her relationships. As far as she is concerned, men are only good for one thing, sex on demand. That attitude leads to a series of one night stands which she uses to mask and escape feelings. She’s been there, done that, and it didn’t end well. That was until she crosses paths with King Lion. He forces his way into her life and changes everything. Dometrius, known as King Lion to boxing fans, is all about his career. He’s worked hard to make it and is enjoying every second of his successful life, which means living with little or no regret. Although he has plenty of women at his disposal, he’s thrown off and pulled in immediately the second he lays eyes on Lourdes. After one night in Vegas with her, she leaves him with a wrong number and a lot of questions. As fate would have it, Dom and Lourdes both live in Miami, and his fame as a high-profile boxer affords him the resources to track her down. After a little resistance, Dom finally gets Lourdes to agree to an official date, but life seems to weave its way into their worlds, reintroducing the past that they both have to be held accountable for. Life isn’t kind when your heart wants more than life is willing to give. Will Dom and Lourdes have a fighting chance, or will they be left Feeling Some Type of Way?