Forty-six years ago Jake pledged his love to Sadie by carving their names into the Carving Tree. Now newly retired, Sadie is eager to take on life’s newest adventures with Jake by her side. But when the symbol of their enduring love begins to wither and Jake is diagnosed with a heart condition, Sadie’s dreams are put on hold.Bitter towards God, Sadie is determined to nurse Jake and their beloved Carving Tree back to health on her own. Sadie’s luck takes a turn for the worse when she and Jake are threatened with a false lawsuit and Megan Thompson, an aspiring model, goes missing after leaving her young son in Sadie’s care. Overwhelmed with stress, medical bills, and Jake’s deteriorating health, Sadie’s notion of retired life is turning out to be quite different than she anticipated. Miles away, Megan Thompson’s world is also shaken. When what she thought was an audition for a modeling gig turns out to be a hoax, Megan � finds herself a victim of a human-traf�ficking ring. Terri�fied and far from home, Megan knows only one thing is certain: she must, against all odds, escape and return to her son.Will Sadie be able to regain her footing and � nd peace with God, and will Megan ever escape and return to her young son? Both women’s courage and resilience are put to the test in Terry Bowman’s captivating novel, The Carving Tree.

    World famous wrestling diva Tammy Lynn “Sunny” Sytch has written a tell-all autobiography that follows her into the ring and on the road, through her romantic relationships, domestic abuse, her battle with cancer, incarceration, getting sober and the release of her adult film with Vivid Entertainment.

    In keeping with his reputation for writing about big ideas in an illuminating and graceful way, he shows how sports respond to deep human needs; describes the ways in which baseball, football and basketball became national institutions and how they reached their present forms; and covers the evolution of rules, the rise and fall of the most successful teams, and the historical significance of the most famous and influential figures such as Babe Ruth, Vince Lombardi, and Michael Jordan. Whether he is writing about baseball as the agrarian game, football as similar to warfare, basketball as the embodiment of post-industrial society, or the moral havoc created by baseball's designated hitter rule, Mandelbaum applies the full force of his learning and wit to subjects about which so many Americans care passionately: the games they played in their youth and continue to follow as adults. By offering a fresh and unconventional perspective on these games, The Meaning of Sports makes for fascinating and rewarding reading both for fans and newcomers.

    This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

    When family, coworkers, neighbors, or friends cause continual grief, you can move from victim to victor.

    For one thing, he was blessed with extraordinary talent. Those who played alongside and watched him in the Manchester United youth team in the early 1990s insist he was as good as Ryan Giggs - possibly even better. Giggs, who played on the opposite wing, says he is inclined to agree.Doherty was also an eccentric - by football standards, at least. When his colleagues went to Old Trafford to watch the first team on Saturday afternoons, he preferred to take the bus into Manchester to go busking. He wore second-hand clothes, worshipped Bob Dylan, read about theology and French existentialism and wrote songs and poems. One team-mate says "it was like having Bob Dylan in a No 7 shirt".On his 17th birthday, Doherty was offered a five-year contract - unprecedented for a United youngster at that time - and told by Alex Ferguson that he was destined for stardom. But what followed over the next decade is a tale so mysterious, so shocking, so unusual, so amusing but ultimately so tragic, that you are left wondering how on earth it has been untold for so long.The stories of Doherty's contemporaries, that group of Manchester United youngsters who became known as the "Class of '92", are well known. Giggs ended up as the most decorated player in United's history; David Beckham became the most recognisable footballer on the planet; Gary Neville, Paul Scholes and others are household names. The story you don't know is about the player who, having had the world at his feet, died the day before his 27th birthday following an accident in a canal in Holland.

    Things are bound to get hot when the men of Crimson Security are involved. Book 1 My name is Darby Connors and I’m in deep. Maybe too deep for me to make it out alive. It isn’t the first time I’ve been in trouble while doing my job, but this time feels different. Something is coming for me. Someone is coming for me. Hendrix Crimson is assigned to guard my body, and guard it, he does. Caught up in the mess I’ve made, he tries to help me solve the case I’m working on so he only has to worry about one killer coming after me. Book 2 My name is Lacey Holt and I do not need help from Jagger Crimson. Someone is messing with my family, and my ranch, trying to drag up painful family memories. They’ve convinced my dad that my brother’s murderer is back and ready to pick off the rest of our family. I know better. I know that I can take care of it without Jagger, too. He’s a constant distraction and all he’ll do is get in my way. Convincing my dad of that is another story. When it becomes clear that the threat is directed at me, he is ready to ship me off to safety. I’m an adult, though. I’m tough. There’s nothing that this hidden bully can do to run me off my family land. Except for kidnap me and lock me away. So, maybe I do need Jagger after all. Not that I’d ever want to admit that to him. Book 3 Left an orphan after a rough childhood, I was taken in by the president of a rough Motorcycle Club. Given plenty of room to grow, I was treated like a princess. Until I wasn’t. When things in the club change and a new president takes his throne, I’m in more danger than ever. Sold and then saved by Jackson, I owe him my life. It’s not anything he’s interested in, though. Jackson comes with baggage, but I get it. I have my own. Who can help that when we unpack it, things get a little messy? Book 4 I’m not who I used to be. Detective Rain Willows died while being held captive by a very bad man. Now, I don’t know who I am. I’m not a cop. I’m barely a human some days. I’m scared. I lost everything. I gained some scars. The bad man is still after me. Thad Brooks has an ax to grind with me, but he feels like the only thing standing between me and death. I don’t want to admit that I’m afraid, or that I need help, but when things get bad enough, I’m not too stubborn to wave the white flag. Book 5 My only desire in life is to get my daughter back. At any cost, including my life. My name is Clara Crimson and I’m not a good person. I live with a monster and I have killed. I don’t deserve to be happy, but she does. Cash Crimson, my ex-husband, has every reason to hate me and he does. He probably would like to watch me die, but he thinks he needs me to find our daughter. What we find isn’t what we expected, though. I’m not sure either of us will survive it. I’m not sure I want to. We have to keep our daughter safe. We have to get close and remember we’re on the same team. It's time to bring down the man who destroyed us.

    Manchester United away against Crystal Palace at a packed-out Selhurst Park. Eric Cantona, United's mercurial talisman, has been man-marked closely all game by Richard Shaw and become increasingly frustrated. In the 48th minute, Cantona’s temper boils over and he kicks out at Shaw. The ref shows him a red card. On his way off the pitch, a Palace fan rushes towards the hoardings to hurl abuse. The Frenchman loses it. He launches into the crowd, aiming a kung-fu kick at the fan’s chest. He is forcibly restrained and then taken off down the tunnel. The football world is stunned. Nothing like this has ever happened before.What followed has entered football folklore: the media furore, the seagulls following the trawler, and the longest domestic ban ever handed to a player; it would end up lasting 250 days. As Manchester United’s campaign stuttered towards a trophy-less conclusion, surrendering the league on the last day of the season and losing the FA Cup final, Cantona withdrew from the public eye. But, behind closed doors, Ferguson was planning the most remarkable of fresh starts for his star player and for a new-look United.250 Daystells the story in brilliant detail of one of the most turbulent times in United’s recent history. Showing Cantona in a new light, and the genius of Ferguson’s man management and vision in close relief, it is an incredibly entertaining and insightful look at the most controversial episode of the Premier League era.

    Life is good until the father who abandoned her as an infant turns up dead in the swamp. Who else can help her but Ida Belle, Gertie and Fortune? And they've got their work cut out for them as they try to solve two mysteries - who Hugo Ancelet really was, and who killed him?

    

    It laid bare the devastating prevalence of steroids and its effects on users. In order to tackle the whole story, dig up the facts, and connect the dots, Irvin Muchnick gives the most sensational scandal in pro wrestling history the full true-crime treatment in Chris and Nancy. Muchnick – the author of Wrestling Babylon and a co-author of Benoit: Wrestling with the Horror That Destroyed a Family and Crippled a Sport – has parsed public records and interviewed dozens of witnesses, inside and outside wrestling, to put together the first thorough and authoritative events of the gruesome June 2007 weekend in Fayette County, Georgia, during which World Wrestling Entertainment superstar Chris Benoit murdered his wife Nancy and their seven-year-old son Daniel, before proceeding to kill himself. But this book goes beyond the crime itself to answer some of the most important questions behind it. The biography of Benoit, a wrestler’s wrestler, makes it clear that his tragedy was a microcosm of the culture of drugs and death behind the scenes of one of North America’s most popular brand of sports entertainment. The author probes the story of the massive supplies of steroids and human growth hormone found in his home – all prescribed by a “doctor to the stars” who got indicted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and all dismissed by a WWE “wellness policy” that promoted everything except its talent’s wellness. The Benoit case led to unprecedented scrutiny of wrestling’s overall health and safety standards, by Congressional investigators and others, and this book is the primary source of what they found and what they should continue to look for. The ebook edition includes a new introduction that looks at recent events in sports, and further contextualizes the story of Chris Benoit and the figures surrounding his career.

    Later inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, his achievements as a competitor and a coach are the stuff of legend. But Noll always remained an intensely private and introspective man, never revealing much of himself as a person or as a coach, not even to the players and fans who revered him.             Chuck Noll did not need a dramatic public profile to be the catalyst for one of the greatest transformations in sports history. In the nearly four decades before he was hired, the Pittsburgh Steelers were the least successful team in professional football, never winning so much as a division title. After Noll’s arrival, his quiet but steely leadership quickly remolded the team into the most accomplished in the history of professional football.  And what he built endured well beyond his time with the Steelers – who have remained one of America’s great NFL teams, accumulating a total of six Super Bowls, eight AFC championships, and dozens of division titles and playoff berths.             In this penetrating biography, based on deep research and hundreds of interviews, Michael MacCambridge takes the measure of the man, painting an intimate portrait of one of the most important figures in American football history. He traces Noll’s journey from a Depression-era childhood in Cleveland, where he first played the game in a fully integrated neighborhood league led by an African-American coach and then seriously pursued the sport through high school and college.  Eventually, Noll played both defensive and offensive positions professionally for the Browns, before discovering that his true calling was coaching.  MacCambridge reveals that Noll secretly struggled with and overcame epilepsy to build the career that earned him his place as “the Emperor” of Pittsburgh during the Steelers’ dynastic run in the 1970s, while in his final years, he battled Alzheimer’s in the shelter of his caring and protective family.             Noll’s impact went well beyond one football team. When he arrived, the city of steel was facing a deep crisis, as the dramatic decline of Pittsburgh’s lifeblood industry traumatized an entire generation. “Losing,” Noll said on his first day on the job, “has nothing to do with geography.” Through his calm, confident leadership of the Steelers and the success they achieved, the people of Pittsburgh came to believe that winning was possible, and their recovery of confidence owed a lot to the Steeler’s new coach. The famous urban renaissance that followed can only be understood by grasping what Noll and his team meant to the people of the city. The man Pittsburghers could never fully know helped them see themselves better.             Chuck Noll: His Life’s Work tells the story of a private man in a very public job. It explores the family ties that built his character, the challenges that defined his course, and the love story that shaped his life. By understanding the man himself, we can at last clearly see Noll’s profound influence on the city, players, coaches, and game he loved. They are all, in a real sense, heirs to the football team Chuck Noll built.

    Your heart will be challenged by the vision of Joshua, the passion of Nehemiah, and the faith of Joseph.

    There is a kind of religion that is lifeless and is the bitter enemy of true faith. Think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s prophetic attempts to waken the sleeping German church, often unwitting allies of Hitler and the Third Reich. Or of William Wilberforce’s heroic efforts to rouse his complacent “Christian” countrymen to stand against the monstrous evil of the slave trade. Bonhoeffer and Wilberforce stood against the evil of their times—an evil often repackaged in religious-sounding language.Eric Metaxas’s electrifying message—delivered before the president and dozens of national leaders at the Sixtieth Annual National Prayer Breakfast—calls readers to follow in the steps of Wilberforce and Bonhoeffer, men who lived their faith and swam against the mainstream, instead of drifting along with it. Metaxas makes it clear that phony religiosity offends God himself—and that real prayer is only possible with a living faith in a living God. And that kind of faith can transform the world. No pressure.

    Events include the famous Rumble in the Jungle fight with Muhammad Ali and his comback in 1994 to raise money for the Houston Youth Center.