Jeffanory: Stories from Beyond Soccer Saturday

Colin Shindler was dealt a cruel hand by Fate when he became a passionate Manchester City supporter. In this brilliant sporting autobiography he recalls the great characters of his youth, like his eccentric Uncle Laurence, as well as his professional heroes. Threaded through these sporting events is the author's own story, which touches on a universal nerve, growing up in a Jewish family, his childhodd destroyed by the sudden death of his mother and his slow emotional recovery through his love for Manchester City. It is a tale that reveals what it is like to be on the outside looking in, with his nose pressed up against the sweet shop window watching the United supporters take all the wine gums.

Colin Shindler has previously written of his deep love for Manchester City in the bestselling Manchester United Ruined My Life and three other previous books. Now he tells the story of his sorrowful disenchantment with his home town club as, on the instruction of its new foreign owners, it turns itself remorselessly into a global brand. Trophyless since 1976, in 2011 Manchester City won the FA Cup and set off on their quest for the Premiership and the Champions League.  In their zeal to win every competition the new Manchester City has spent money with wild abandon, signing outstandingly talented players as well as a few ordinary ones but in almost every case at hugely inflated prices. From the nail-biting win over Gillingham in the League Two Play Off final at Wembley in 1999 to the climax of the 2011 season, Shindler watches his team get steadily more successful and, to his own bewilderment, feels steadily more alienated from it.  This is the story of a frustrated romantic who finds in the glitz and glamour of the current media-obsessed game a helter-skelter of artificially fabricated excitement.  As he details how football courses through his veins Shindler tells how it intersects with his own life, a life that has been marked by family tragedy, and how he finally found personal redemption even as his team lost its soul. 

Friends. Everyone needs them. Especially when relations between you and your family are less than perfect. And for the talented and ambitious Janet Street-Porter, her friends became her family.    After the mirthless childhood she so superbly portrayed in Baggage, Janet moved on to the sexy and excessive world of the media in the 60s and 70s. Her talents and outrageousness attracted a whole host of disparate, fascinating and creative friends, who helped, and sometimes hindered, her path to success. But Janet's address book changed as the years went by. Friends fell out, and new ones came in.    Fall Out is the story of these vibrant characters - some famous, some infamous, all extraordinary - and their often volatile relationships with her. Above all, it is a portrait of an exciting and creative era, by someone who lived it to the full.

Brilliant, brave, controversial, combative, intellectual - just how do you become Janet Street-Porter? Born in working-class Fulham to parents who for years she refused to believe were really hers, Janet loathed her mother, tried to murder her sister, and had a friend who was given a life sentence for a contract killing. In a household subsumed with repressive 'Welshness' (even the budgerigar spoke Welsh), she found solace in unsuitable friendships and outrageous behaviour.In this mesmerising account of growing up in post-war London there is poignancy, mystery - and a trademark black humour. BAGGAGE will touch readers at many levels; it is as edgy and fearless as Janet Street-Porter herself.