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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Dermot Gilleece

Tales of golfing stars and memorable moments from Ireland's best-loved golf correspondent. 
 
In almost thirty years as Ireland's leading golf journalist, Dermot Gilleece has met and interviewed numerous heroes of the game. 
 
Join Dermot on the course as he looks back over many wonderful years of golf with the greats - from Jack Nicklaus' first game on Irish soil, to sympathetic accounts of the declining skills of iconic golfers such as Seve Ballesteros. Packed with stories and insights about legends from Gene Sarazen, Tom Watson and Tiger Woods to, of course, 'Himself', Christy O'Connor Snr, Touching Greatness offers highlights from Dermot's much-loved column in the Irish Times, as well as more recent observations on the game. There are unmissable insights into illustrious characters from the amateur game, women's golf, Irish involvement in major team competitions like the Ryder Cup, and the history of Irish golfers in the Open, including the double Open and PGA Champion, Padraig Harrington. 
 
At turns moving and funny, and always beautifully written, Dermot's tales bring you right onto the fairway as you soak up the very best stories from inside the world of competitive golf.

Touching Greatness

Memorable Encounters with Golfing Legends

Scott Murray

Simon Farnaby

The hilarious, heartwarming and - unbelievably - true story of Maurice Flitcroft, the World's Worst Golfer 
 
'The story of its greatest anti-hero is just what the game needs' Spectator 
 
When 46-year-old crane driver Maurice Flitcroft chanced his way into the Open - having never before played a round of golf in his life - he ran up a record-worst score of 121. The sport's ruling classes banned him for life. 
 
Maurice didn't take it lying down. In a hilarious game of cat-and-mouse with The Man, he entered tournaments again - and again, and again - using increasingly ludicrous pseudonyms such as Gene Pacecki, Arnold Palmtree and Count Manfred von Hoffmanstel (more often than not disguised by a fake moustache). 
 
In doing so, he sent the authorities into apoplexy, and won the hearts of fans from Muirfield to Michigan, becoming arguably the most popular - and certainly the bravest - sporting underdog the world has ever known 
 
'Hilarious' Esquire

The Phantom of the Open

Maurice Flitcroft, the World's Worst Golfer - NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING MARK RYLANCE

Mark James

Into the Bear Pit is the most talked about sports book for years. Throughout the summer of 2000, Mark James's inside story of the Brookline Ryder Cup was never out of the sports headlines and took up a lengthy residence in the upper reaches of the Sunday Times' bestseller list. 
Fuelled by a media feeding frenzy, the controversy rapidly gathered enormous momentum and eventually led to James's resignation as one of Sam Torrence's assistants for the 2001 Ryder Cup at Belfry. 
Read about Mark James's rocky relationships with Nick Faldo and Tony Jacklin and the infamous disposal of Faldo's good luck letter. Read about the extraordinary behaviour of American Players, wives, officials and spectators during the 'Battle of Brookline'. 
Read the most explosive golf book ever published.

Into The Bear Pit

The Hard-Hitting Inside Story of the Brookline Ryder Cup

James Dodson

FINAL ROUNDS celebrates a lifetime of golf shared by a father and son who take on a last trip together to the finest courses of England and Scotland. Their relationship is forged on the golf course, and whatever problems they have are worked out while smashing drives and lining up putts. But Jim's father is 80 years old and just before they leave for a visit to the Scottish links where his father played during the First World War, he finds out his cancer has returned and he only has few months to live. The trip to the Scottish links takes on a new meaning, as they determine to honour their lives and love together (for each other, their families, and for the game). While playing the world-renowned courses as St Andrews and Muirfield, they encounter great golf lore and legend; but more importantly, a son learns the secrets of his father's past and to admire his father even more than he thought possible. In the process, he takes home some very important lessons about the meaning of family. Written with searing honesty and unbounded wit, FINAL ROUNDS is a tribute to a very special game and the fathers and sons who make it so.

Final Rounds

Dale Concannon

Seven-time European number one, and the towering inspiration behind three successive European Ryder Cup victories, Colin Montgomerie has been praised for his golfing brilliance as well as vilified for his on-course sullenness. Yet 'Monty' has learned to take such matters in his stride, despite the break-up of his marriage and tabloid intrusion into his life. A perfectionist at heart, his uncompromising attitude to failure remains both his best, and possibly most misunderstood asset. Someone who hates to lose more than he loves to win, Monty is a true golfing maverick who makes headlines whatever he does. 
 
Dale Concannon, author of the Sunday Times bestseller Nick Faldo: Driven, gets under the skin of this fascinating player. From his early years growing up at Royal Troon, where his father was club secretary, to sinking the winning putt in the Ryder Cup at Valderrama in 1997, from the battle of Brookline in 1999 and despair at the US Open, to leading triumphantly from the front at the K Club in 2006, Monty unravels the man behind the moniker, and is the true story of this most charismatic of golfers.

Monty

Raw: The Definitive Biography of Colin Montgomerie

Norman Dabell

The Ryder Cup battle between Europe and the USA is one of the biggest events in the golfing calendar and in 2006, the former underdogs showed they are now the dominant force in the biennial matches. It was another marvellous example of teamwork, and the caddies have played no small part in Europe overcoming the odds. The players hit the shots; their trusty caddies share the hopes, the glory and, occasionally, the misery. 
 
What was it like being beside Sam Torrance when he holed the winning putt and shed his tears on that historic moment at The Belfry in 1985? Fast forward to 2006 and a highly emotional appearance by Darren Clarke. What was it like being by his side? What was the story behind Colin Montgomerie's right-hand-man returning to his bag to help lay to rest the ghost of 1999? How do you cope when Seve Ballesteros is in full cry against the 'old enemy', especially when you are an American yourself? In 1991, a spike mark cost Europe the tournament, but what really happened behind the ropes? Who knew his man had had a vision he would beat Tiger Woods in 1997 - and saw it come true? What was it like witnessing those awful scenes at Brookline up close and personal in 1999? Who knew exactly which line to take when Paul McGinley sank his memorable winning putt in 2002? 
 
How We Won the Ryder Cup covers all the drama that has unfolded in the competition over the years and includes the action from the 2006 tournament at The K Club, County Kildare in Ireland, which saw Europe storm to a third successive victory.

How We Won the Ryder Cup

The Caddies' Stories

Timothy O'Grady

Weather, hazards, poor coordination, erratic biorhythms, hangovers, an unruly mind and statistical improbability - these are just a few of the obstacles to hitting a pure golf shot. Che Guevara, Alice Cooper, Dennis Hopper, and Tiger Woods have all struggled with the above to a greater or lesser degree. And, since being initiated as a child into the arcane mysteries of the game of golf, Timothy O'Grady too has carried in his mind an obsession with the sport, shrugging off its social unacceptability and embracing its history, its literature and his own private battle with the club.   For O'Grady, the obsession has, at times, been all-consuming and On Golf is structured around a personal history - how his father played and taught him, how the game dominated his teenage years, and how father and son continued to talk manically about the game even as the older man lay fading away in the bed in which he would die. But O'Grady also discusses the rich literature of golf, from Tobias Smollett to P. G. Wodehouse, and tells us of the terrifying and glorious occasion when he got to play a round with Arnold Palmer. On Golf is the work of a great writer and a good golfer. Timothy O'Grady still dreams that he may one day become a truly fine player but in the meantime he has given us a book which beautifully describes his love affair with the game and goes to the root of the obsession that captivates so many.

On Golf

Iain Carter

'I am the Ryder Cup, I suppose' Colin Montgomerie 
 
For twenty years Colin Montgomerie has been Europe's go-to guy in the Ryder Cup. He has been the catalyst, the leader, the closer. The man they call on to take down America's big guns, the man they turn to when a win is desperately needed to steady the nerves. Now in the twilight of his career he has one last role to play: In 2010 he is Captain of Team Europe in their quest to regain their trophy. 
 
Montgomerie's record in golf's showpiece tournament is unparalleled. Since 1991 he has performed in eight Ryder Cups, winning five of them and has never, ever been beaten in a singles match. He is the most talked about European golfer of his generation but, agonisingly he has never managed to win one of golf's major championships. 
 
Monty's Manor gets right inside Colin Montgomerie's history with the Ryder Cup from his debut in 1991 right up to and including the drama and excitement of this years contest in Wales. Iain Carter has had unprecedented access to key players on both sides of the pond, caddies, coaches, friends, foes, rivals and reporters. Through their eyes we look back on two decades of successes and near misses. It is through them that we get to see the real 'Monty'.

Monty's Manor

Colin Montgomerie and the Ryder Cup

Carl Hiaasen

"Every weekend, thousands of otherwise rational men and women are cursing, kicking at divots and smashing expensively milled putters against the trunks of immovable hardwood trees. These players go home in a toxic funk to inflict gloom upon their loved ones until the following Saturday, when they rush back to the golf course and do it all over again." 
 
In the summer of 2005, Carl Hiaasen picked up a golf club again for the first time in 32 years. He was not the best of players in 1973, and had certainly not got any younger in the intervening period. Undeterred, and weighed down by an increasing quantity of golf equipment and game-enhancing products acquired from adverts on The Golf Channel, who can see a sucker coming, Carl was soon hacking and shanking his way around the courses of Florida, and his obsession with the sport was rekindled. Animals were harmed during the making of this book. 
 
Over the course of the next 18 months, Carl's game got better, then worse, then slightly better, then much worse again, and he even managed to jinx Tiger Woods. On the way to finally summoning up the courage to compete in an actual tournament himself, Carl details the hilarious consequences of his misguided belief that he could actually play the game. We also learn that Justin Timberlake has a better golf handicap (6) than Bob Dylan (17), that Eagle Trace golf course contains not one trace of an eagle, and that Mind Drive capsules are not necessarily a good idea. 
 
But through all the misery and frustration (save the odd glorious shot), golf took up residence in Carl's heart again. Fairway to Hell is the ultimate tale of the trials and tribulations of the amateur golfer, but also the heart-warming story of how the game brought together the generations of the Hiaasen family.

Fairway To Hell

Tom Callahan

Ever since he was a two-year-old golf prodigy, Eldrick 'Tiger' Woods has often been viewed less as a human being and more as a ball-striking machine - and his carefully guarded image and emotionless persona seemed to guarantee that it would remain that way. Even after his recent bombshell adultery scandal, the public still knows very little about the man behind the golf clubs and multimillion-dollar endorsement deals. But one thing is certain: Earl Woods, Tiger's beloved and now deceased father, knew him better and influenced his life more than anyone. To know the father is to know the son. 
 
With unparalleled insight into the man who made Tiger Woods the person that he is, His Father's Son is both a detailed biography and a touching story of an intense father-and-son relationship.

His Father's Son

Earl and Tiger Woods

James Patterson

How did Tiger Woods become the greatest of all time? 
 
And how did he fall so spectacularly? 
 
Before the age of twenty-five, Tiger Woods had risen to phenomenon status: twice named Sportsman of the Year by Sports Illustrated, champion of more than thirty professional tournaments and the youngest player to win all four Grand Slam tournaments. 
 
In vivid, dramatic scenes, Tiger, Tiger taps into the transformative moments of Wood's life, both on and off the course. 
___________________________ 
 
PRAISE FOR JAMES PATTERSON 
 
'The master storyteller of our times' HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON 
 
'No one gets this big without amazing natural storytelling talent - which is what Jim has, in spades' LEE CHILD 
 
'Patterson boils a scene down to the single, telling detail, the element that defines a character or moves a plot along. It's what fires off the movie projector in the reader's mind' MICHAEL CONNELLY 
 
'James Patterson is The Boss. End of.' IAN RANKIN 
 
'Nobody does it better' JEFFREY DEAVER

Tiger, Tiger

Tom Cox

As a teenager in Nottingham, Tom Cox was possessed. Despite the best endeavours of his frankly rather groovy parents, nascent fashion sense and regular exposure to credible music from an early age, he was inexorably drawn into the bizarre, esoteric world that is golf, with its male-bonding rituals and strange trousers. And thus a strange hybrid was born -- from 1988 to 1995, Tom was Midlands golf's answer to Iggy Pop. 
 
Assisted by his fellow junior members at the local club, he cut a swathe through the golfing establishment, putting dead animals in his fellow golfers' shoes, setting fire to the club professional's shop, bringing Colin Montgomerie close to tears and repeatedly wearing the wrong colour of socks. On the golf course he felt simultaneously at home and somehow alienated. But Tom also wanted to be (and became) the best, taking five years out of normal adolescent existence to live, breathe, walk and talk nothing but the sport he loved. 
 
Nice Jumper is the story of how Tom tried to fit in, failed, got down to a handicap of two, tried to fit in again, got suspended from the club, got corrupted by rock and roll, then attempted to corrupt golf itself. Original, poignant and highly entertaining, it's a book about one teenager's obsessive attempts to attain sporting nirvana - despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fashion.

Nice Jumper

Severiano Ballesteros

Now the subject of a major film. 
 
Once or twice a generation, an athlete transcends his sport - at last, here's Seve Ballesteros in his own words 
 
There are golfers, and there are golfers. And then there's Seve. 
 
Severiano Ballesteros was perhaps the most naturally gifted golfer ever to have walked a fairway. From the moment his brother Manuel gave him his first club he was unstoppable. A few weeks before his seventeenth birthday he turned pro. Five years later he won the Open. A genius had arrived. 
 
For the best part of two decades Seve dominated the golfing landscape. He played shots others could only dream of. With 94 wins as a professional (including 5 majors) he was a phenomenon, an athlete who transcended his sport. 
 
But Seve stood for more than simple excellence. Almost single-handedly, Seve gave European golf credibility; almost single-handedly, he made the Ryder Cup one of the greatest contests in world sport. And when, as captain, he finally lifted the trophy on home soil in 1997, a whole continent rejoiced. His pride and passion have inspired millions, and we have taken him to our hearts. 
 
Here, for the first time, Seve tells his own story. From his humble beginnings right up to the present day, here at last is the man behind the magic in his own words. Seve is utterly entertaining, blazingly charismatic and unique. 
 
Severiano "Seve" Ballesteros Sota was a Spanish professional golfer and a leading sports figure. He won more than 90 international tournaments in an illustrious career. He first caught the attention of the sporting world in 1976, when at the age of 19 he finished second at The Open. He played a leading role in the re-emergence of European golf, helping the European Ryder Cup team to five wins both as a player and captain. He won the World Match Play Championship a record-tying five times. He is generally regarded as the greatest Continental European golfer of all time and won a record 50 times on the European Tour. 
Ballesteros died of brain cancer on 7 May 2011, aged 54.

Seve

The Autobiography

Donegan Lawrence

In this very funny sports book (a cross between Nick Hornby and Bill Bryson) young journalist Lawrence Donegan tells the story of the summer he spent caddying for Scottish golfer Ross Drummond, ranked over 400 in the world,on the European Tour. Thisis the inside story of the geniuses,the cheats, the gurus and the hangers-on that make up the golf scene. 
 
&quot;A joy to read. Not since Bill Bryson plotted a random route through small-town America has such a breezy idea for a book had a happier or funnier result&quot; - Lynne Truss, The Times 
 
&quot;Funny, beautifully observed and it tells you things about sport in general and golf in particular that nobody else had thought to pass on&quot; - Patrick Collins, Mail on Sunday

Four Iron in the Soul

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