Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

Joseph Delaney

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Paul McGrath

The extraordinary and heartbreaking memoir from one of football's greatest players 
 
Paul McGrath is Ireland's best loved sportsman and also its least understood. An iconic football presence during a professional career stretching over 14 years, he played for his country in the European Championship finals of 1988 and the World Cup finals of 1990 and 1994. But, behind the implied glamour of life in the employ of great English clubs like Manchester United and Aston Villa, McGrath wrestled with a range of destructive emotions that made his success in the game little short of miraculous. 
 
That story has until now never been told. It is a story that runs from a hard, hidden childhood spent in Dublin's orphanages all the way to the pain of two marriage break-ups and the struggle to cope with life after football. Quite apart from his all too public struggle with alcoholism, the story runs through the surreal highs and calamitous lows of a life lived habitually on the edge of chaos. 
 
It is not just a football story. It is an extraordinary human story that is certain to surprise with its candour. 
 
Here, for the first time, read about the father he never met; the mother whose love never died; the routine loneliness and ritual bullying endured by a black kid growing up behind closed doors in 1960s Dublin; the emotional breakdown suffered on leaving that institution; the recovery that - remarkably - brought him all the way to Old Trafford; the rollercoaster ride that followed. Here, the guilt, fear, self-loathing are all laid bare in a story fired with hope and determination for the future. 
 
It may well be the most candid sports book ever written.

Back from the Brink

The Autobiography

Bill Buford

___________________________ 
THE BESTSELLING ACCOUNT OF FOOTBALL VIOLENCE 
 
Welcome to the world of football thuggery. 
 
They have names like Bonehead, Paraffin Pete and Steamin’ Sammy. They like lager, football, the Queen, and themselves. They love England. They dislike the rest of the known universe. 
 
The beautiful game remains ugly. 
 
From following Manchster's Red Army to drinking with skinheads, acclaimed writer Bill Buford enters this alternate society and records both its savageries and its sinister allure with the social imagination of George Orwell and the raw personal engagement of Hunter S. Thompson. 
 
Among the Thugs is a terrifying, malevolently funny, supremely chilling book about the experience, and the eerie allure, of crowd violence and football culture.

Among The Thugs

Michael Calvin

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2015* 
 
A man punches the wall in a strategic show of anger. Another complains he has become a stranger to those he loves. A third relies on “my three a day: coffee, Nurofen and a bottle of wine.” Yet another admits he is an oddity, who would prefer to be working in cricket. A fifth describes his professional life as “a circus”. These are football managers, live and uncut. Arsene Wenger likens the job to “living on a volcano: any day may be your last”. He speaks with the authority of being the longest serving manager in the English game, having been at Arsenal for 17 years. The average lifespan of a Football League manager is 17 months. Fifty three managers, across all four Divisions, were sacked, or resigned, in the 2012-13 season. There were fifty seven managerial changes in the 2013-14 season. What makes these men tick? They are familiar figures, who rarely offer anything more than a glimpse into their personal and professional lives. What shapes them? How and why do they do their job? Award-winning writer Michael Calvin provides the answers. 
 
Insecurity is a unifying factor, but managers at different levels face different sets of problems. Depending on their status, they are dealing with multi-millionaires, or mortgage slaves. Living on the Volcano charts the progress of more than 20 managers, in different circumstances and in different phases of their career. Some, like Brendan Rodgers and Roberto Martinez, are at the peak of their profession. Others, like Chris Hughton, Brian McDermott and Gary Waddock, have been sacked, and are seeking a way back into the game. They offer a unique insight into a trade which is prone to superficial judgement and savage swings in fortune. Management requires ruthlessness and empathy, idealism and cunning. Stories overlap, experiences intermingle, and myths are exposed.

Living on the Volcano

The Secrets of Surviving as a Football Manager

Nigel McCrery

A moving narrative history of the professional footballers who fought and died in World War I, with a foreword by Gary Lineker. 
 
In 1914, as today, successful footballers were heroes and role models. They were the sporting superstars of their time; symbols of youth, health and vigour. Naturally enough, when war broke out they felt it was their duty to join up and fight. Between 1914 and 1918, 213 professional players fell in action. Some teams lost half their players, either killed or else so badly injured in mind and body that they were never to play again. 
 
 The Final Season is the powerfully moving account of these young men who swapped the turf of the pitch and the cheers of the fans for the freezing mud of the battlefield and the terrible scream of shell fire. It follows them as they leave their fans and families behind, undergo training and then travel on to the bloody arenas of war: Ypres, Gallipoli, the Somme, Passchendaele. 
 
Nigel McCrery paints these men in vivid detail. From their achievements on the football pitch to their heroic conduct on the battlefield, we will learn of the selfless courage and determination they displayed in the face of adversity. For far too many, we will also learn when, and how, they made the ultimate sacrifice.

The Final Season

The Footballers Who Fought and Died in the Great War

Winner of The Times British Sports Book Award 2014. 
 
A fascinating insight into the enclosed world of football scouts in the UK 
 
A teenaged boy plays football in a suburban park. His name is Raheem Sterling. The call is made: “Get down here quick. This is something special”. 
 
Another boy is 8, going on 28. His name is Jack Wilshere. The referee, an Arsenal scout, spirits him away from Luton Town. 
 
A young goalkeeper struggles on loan at Cheltenham Town in League Two. His name is Jack Butland. Within months he will be playing for England. 
 
Welcome to football’s hidden tribe. Scouts are everywhere yet nowhere, faceless and nameless, despite making the informed decisions worth millions. Award-winning sportswriter Michael Calvin opens up their hidden world, examining their disconnected lifestyles, petty betrayals and unconsidered professionalism of men who spend long, lonely hours on the road.

The Nowhere Men

Will Greenwood

Known as Shaggy to his mates, Greenwood is one of rugby's and international sport's most engaging, intelligent, outspoken and witty characters. A Lancastrian to the tips of this size 12 boots, the giant centre has been an automatic choice in the England XV since his debut against Australia in 1997. 
 
A few months earlier he looked set to become only the third uncapped Englishman to play for the British Lions when he came within a whisker of losing his life after he was speared to the ground in a heavy tackle, lost consciousness and swallowed his tongue. 
 
After taking several months to recover he quickly made an impact at international level following a widespread clamour in the press for his call-up to the England side. An elegant riposte to the old jibe that England rugby players lack guile and imagination, the Harlequins' and former Leicester centre has brought a shimmering, magical quality to his team's back play, opening up defences with clever angled running, superb distribution and a gravity-defying ability to stay up in the tackle. 
 
Greenwood also featured in England's doomed Rugby World Cup campaign in 1999 before playing a central role in the team's dramatic triumph in Australia four years later. 
 
His life off the pitch has been no less eventful, he and his wife Caro having experienced extreme despair and joy in recent years with the loss of one son, Freddie, and the birth of another, Archie.

Will

The Autobiography of Will Greenwood

Franklin Foer

What in the world has the power to liberate women in Iran while provoking antagonism between Catholics and Protestants in Scotland, to lure Nigerians to the cold of the Ukraine while heating up class warfare in the US heartlands, and both profit local gangsters and create local - and international - celebrities? 
 
Foer presents an unexpected, uniquely revealing tour of the politics and culture of football from Milan to Tehran. He examines the game's role in sustaining ancient hatreds and rivalries (Serbia's Red Star and Croatia's Dinamo); in supporting the migration of players and the rise of the football oligarchs (such as Silvio Berlusconi, President of AC Milan - and of Italy); and in defending the virtues and vices of old-fashioned nationalism. As Foer brilliantly illuminates, the Balkan War, anti-Semitism, Jewish identity, racism, social integration, media manipulation, and American patriotism have all been influenced by, as well as have had a dramatic effect on, football. 
 
On his travels, Foer encounters a collection of fans that is stranger than fiction: from a British hooligan with a Jewish mother, a Nazi father and a career as a soldier of fortune, to a fan club in Serbia that turns into a brutal anti-Muslim paramilitary unit. The result is an unforgettable parade of uniquely memorable fans - each set into his - or her - unique political and cultural context.

How Football Explains The World

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