Saturday Comes

The best chants, the funniest nicknames, the greatest headlines and enough little-known facts to keep the average football supporter entertained - and entertaining - for several seasons. This is the story of the greatest game on earth, from 'abandoned matches' to 'Yeovil Town', via celebrity fans, mascots, punditry and superstitions, written from the fan's point of view and with a separate entry for every club in the English and Scottish leagues. Who cares why, if Torquay United's strikers had been more prolific in the 1950s, England may never have won the World Cup; or where football hooliganism actually began; or who the hell Captain Henry Blythe Thornhill Wakelam is? We do. Because as every true student of the game knows: it's important.

The post-Christian West is in decline, revived Islam is on the rise, and Mesopotamia (Syria-Iraq), the cradle of civilization, has become ground zero in a battle for civilization. Despised as infidels (unbelievers) and kafir (unclean), Mesopotamia's indigenous Christian peoples are targeted by fundamentalist Muslims and jihadists for subjugation, exploitation, and elimination. Pushed deep into the fog of war, buried under a mountain of propaganda, and rendered invisible by a shroud of silence, they are betrayed and abandoned by the West's "progressive" political, academic, and media elites who cling to utopian fantasies about Islam while nurturing deep-seated hostility towards Christianity. If they are to survive as a people in their historic homeland, the Christians of Mesopotamia will need all the help they can get. If Western civilization is to survive as a force in its historic heartland (Europe), then we had better start seeing, hearing, and believing the Christians of the Middle East, for their plight prefigures our own.

Starting with the biographical story of a 92 year old Chaldean woman from northern Iraq and a biography of a Kurdish Jewish woman now living in Israel, Adelman writes about the history of Christians and Jews in the Middle East. Their languages, dialects of the 3000 year old Aramaic language, are under threat, and their homelands continuously threatened by war.

Co-narrated by the Baron Samedi, Vodou Spirit of Death, Saturday Comes is an atmospheric tale of love and hate; of Haiti's long-smoldering societal and class issues; of the magic, which reigns over the everyday lives of Haitian natives, and of the unseen forces that draw human beings together. It is a cold, wet, living nightmare when 12-year-old Maya St. Fleur finds herself on a makeshift boat bulging with other Haitians fleeing their island for a better life in the States. The sordid degradation and horror of that trip will mark her for life. The name of the one who has coerced her to leave the country and family she loves is Henri Chenet-perpetrator of unspeakable acts against her mother; blackmailer; and father of the boy who makes her heart beat with young love. Consumed with a desire for vengeance, she nevertheless vows to, one day, kill the son he cherishes above all else. Years later, she reconnects with her childhood love in Miami, and they fall for each other all over again. Will she be able to follow through with her dark, murderous plan hatched so long ago?a

Tim Lovejoy loves football. Along with Helen Chamberlain he presented Soccer AM for more than a decade to become as much a part of a football fan's weekend as phone-ins, back-page EXCLUSIVES and the vidiprinter. But why does Tim love football? Is it actually the most important subject in the world? And did he really once support Watford as a kid? Lovejoy on Football gets down to the nitty gritty of the really important stuff in football, such as: Why he, Tim, is technically a rubbish football fan; Women's true place in football; How 'Save Chip' became the biggest football cause in the country; Why it's a bad idea to hammer Razor Ruddock; And why footballers are in fact underpaid. Packed with amusing anecdotes, bustling with great football stories and full of strong opinions, Lovejoy on Football is the must-have football book of 2007.

WINNER of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2015 In the last two decades football in Britain has made the transition from a peripheral dying sport to the very centre of our popular culture, from an economic basket-case to a booming entertainment industry. What does it mean when football becomes so central to our private and political lives? Has it enriched us or impoverished us? In this sparkling book David Goldblatt argues that no social phenomenon tracks the momentous economic, social and political changes of the post-Thatcherite era in a more illuminating manner than football, and no cultural practice sheds more light on the aspirations and attitudes of our long boom and now calamitous bust. A must-read for the thinking football fan, The Game of Our Lives will appeal to readers of Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby and Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson. It will also be relished by readers of British social history such as Austerity Britain by David Kynaston. 'Brilliantly incisive. Goldblatt is not merely the best football historian writing today, he is possibly the best there has ever been. Goldblatt's book could hardly be more impressive' Sunday Times

Barry Davies' face and voice are instantly recognisable to any UK sports fan. He has guided audiences through some of the most compelling and exciting moments in televised sport over the past 40 years. Here, he relives the magic of those events and reveals what was going on behind the scenes. He has broadcast at a record 10 World Cup finals, and until stepping down in 2004 he was Match of the Days longest-serving commentator. But his expertise goes far beyond football: 10 Summer Olympic Games and numerous Winter Olympics, sharing in Torvill and Deans success in 1984 and heartbreak 10 years later. He is also synonymous with Wimbledon and the Boat Race. The controversies of sport are also addressed, from the Hand of God to crooked judges and professional rivalries off-screen, together with many light-hearted mishaps played out in front of millions of viewers.

'When Friday Comes' is an insightful, humorous account of James Montague's journey through the Middle East, during which he encounters a rioting group of fanatical young Jews who do a passable line in mockney, and the Iraqi national team, who strip him and make him dance for them on their team bus.