Ray Robinson

Hailed by critics as a long-overdue portrait of Sugar Ray Robinson, a man as elusive outside the ring as he was magisterial in it, Pound by Pound is a lively and nuanced profile of an athlete who is arguably the best boxer the scene has ever seen. But the same discipline that Robinson brought to the sport eluded him at home, leading him to emotionally and physically abuse his family. Exposing Robinson's flaws as well as putting his career in the context of his life, this book tells for the first time the full story of a truly complex man.

‘Fast, feverish and arresting’ George Harrison Paul lives quietly in a northern town. By day, he works at a café; by night, he channels his anguish into the dark, arresting panels of his graphic novel, burying childhood trauma beneath ink and imagination. When a chance conversation with a family member shatters this fragile equilibrium, he makes a decision that will change his life: he goes to the police. As rage, doubt and exhaustion threaten to overwhelm him, Paul must decide how far he is willing go in pursuit of the truth. Ray Robinson charts one man’s journey from silence to reckoning, in a powerful story of art, memory and the cost of justice.

Midwinter. As former farmhand Jake, a widower in his seventies, wanders the beautiful, austere moors of North Yorkshire trying to evade capture, we learn of the events of his past: the wife he loved and lost, their child he knows cannot be his, and the deep-seated need for revenge that manifests itself in a moment of violence. On the coast, Jake's friend, Sheila, receives the devastating news. The aftermath of Jake's actions, and what it brings to the surface, will change her life forever. But how will she react when he turns up at her door? As beauty and tenderness blend with violence, this story transports us to a different world, subtly exploring love and loss in a language that both bruises and heals.

Former farmhand Jake, now a widower in his seventies, goes on the run in the Yorkshire Dales after committing a crime. As he travels the countryside trying to avoid capture, we learn of the events of his past: the wife he loved and lost, their child that he knows cannot be his, and the deep-seated need for revenge that manifests itself in a moment of violence. The Mating Habits of Stags reveals afresh the lyrical prose and mastery of character that distinguish Ray Robinson's fiction. An early version of the story was released in 2016 as the short film Edith, starring Peter Mullan and Michelle Fairley, which was Bafta-longlisted for Best British Short Film.

Electricity is now a film starring Agyness Deyn. Lily's epilepsy means she's used to seeing the world in terms of angles - you look at every surface, you weigh up every corner, and you think of your head slamming into it - but what would she be like without her sharp edges? Prickly, spiky, up-front honest and down-to-earth practical, Lily is thirty, and life's not easy but she gets by. Needing no-one and asking for nothing, it's just her and her epilepsy: her constant companion. But then Lily's long-estranged mother dies, and Lily is drawn back into a world she thought she'd left behind. Forced to renegotiate the boundaries of her life, she realises she has a lot to learn - about relationships, about the past, and about herself - and some difficult decisions ahead of her.

From the author of Electricity and Forgetting Zo� «, comes a thought-provoking, beautifully written and taut thriller. Ravenstor, the Peak District. A young woman stands on the shore of a frozen lake and watches a Land Rover crash off the bridge wall and into the ice.

A young man finds that love, death and the ability to go on are inside of us all. This novel let's us all know that growing up in a small town has its challenges and its gifts. Learn how he overcomes the deaths of his parents, his grandparents and his many loves to come out on top.

Zoe Nielsen was just like any other ten-year-old walking to school, not knowing that a chance encounter with Thurman Hayes would lead to her abduction and imprisonment in a converted nuclear bunker, 4,000 miles away, beneath a remote ranch house in Arizona.

A portrait of an American sports icon traces the life of New York Yankees legend Lou Gehrig, describes the highlights of his career, and looks at baseball during the Depression years. Reprint.

Compiles farewell utterances from such notables as Douglas Fairbanks, Thomas Edison, John Maynard Keynes, Eugene O'Neill, Huey Long, Malcolm X, Indira Gandhi, and Conrad Hilton.

In a mere twelve years, Rockne's "Fighting Irish" won 105 games, including five astonishing undefeated seasons. But Rockne was more than the sum of his victories--he was an icon who, more than anyone, made football an American obsession. The book gives us colorful descriptions of such Rockne teams as the undefeated 1924 eleven led by the illustrious Four Horsemen, and the 1930 squad, Rockne's last and greatest. A renowned motivator whose "Win one for the Gipper" is the most famous locker-room speech ever, Rockne was also football's most brilliant innovator, a pioneer of the forward pass, a master of the psychological ploy, and an early advocate of conditioning. In this balanced account, Rockne emerges as an exemplary and complex figure: a fierce competitor who was generous in victory and defeat; an inspiring father figure to his players; and a man so revered nationwide that when he died in a plane crash in 1931, at the height of his career, he was mourned by the entire country. "A solid portrait of one of football's most solid figures."--The New York Times Book Review

The compelling story of one of America's greatest athletes. Ray Robinson draws on rare interviews, press clips, and eyewitness accounts to tell the story of baseball's Golden Age at the turn of the century and that of one of its best players. finest pitcher in baseball history and America's first authentic sports hero, the first athlete who was truly admired and emulated.

This book explores the controversial dilemmas which meet at the intersection of medicine philosphy and law - questions concerning killing and not killing which are faced daily in health care. They embrace euthanasia abortion the care of the elderly and the demented the care of the mentally ill children and those in a persistent vegative state. Who Owns our Bodies? identifies a crisis both in ethics and in empowerment as people face often neccessarily wretched choices. It seeks a framework of guidance for practical decision-making and focuses on two key issues. First who decides on an individual's quality of life and thus on their health care treatments? Second how can patients be empowered with a structure to enable choice self-realization self-reflection and self-responsibility? John Spiers with characteristic clarity and verve offers a fundamental choice between health care experienced as hierarchy and control and the alternative of choice and self-responsibilty. He argues that health care must rely on patients deciding how much power they have not on professionals deciding how much to grant them.

Hailed by The New York Times as "America's Aristophanes," Will Rogers was one of this century's most astute and beloved humorists. If as he often remarked, he never met a man he didn't like, it is also true that Rogers never met a man he didn't like to make fun of. Everyone from congressmen and Presidents to Hollywood movie moguls and wealthy industrialists bore the brunt of his gently lacerating wit--and seemed, mostly, to be charmed in the process. So popular did Rogers become--through dozens of films, a daily column that ran for nine years in newspapers across the country, and countless lectures and stage performances--that he was often urged to run for Congress and even the Presidency. Upon receiving a mock appointment as Congressman-at-Large for the whole United States, Rogers protested, "I regret the disgrace that's been thrust upon me here tonight. I've tried to live my whole life so that I would never become a congressman." In American Original, Ray Robinson chronicles the trajectory of Will Rogers' remarkable life. Written with engaging immediacy and filled with a wealth of delightful anecdotes, this lively portrait follows Rogers from his childhood in the Indian Territory of what is now Oklahoma, to his first spellbinding lariat performances in the Wild West shows (where he would often lasso prominent audience members and drag them on stage), to his stardom in vaudeville and the Ziegfeld Follies, to his early silent movies and the later "talkies," and finally to his astonishing influence as a "cowboy philosopher" columnist read by over 40 million Americans. Far more than other biographers, Robinson excels at conveying Rogers' impact as a political commentator ("I belong to no organized political party. I am a Democrat.") and his great success as an actor in Hollywood, where he was the leading star of Fox Films. And along the way, Robinson paints a vibrant portrait of one of America's most colorful eras. We follow the early evolution of modern entertainment, enjoy vivid snapshots of W. C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, Florenz Ziegfeld, Eddie Cantor, Samuel Goldwyn, Shirley Temple, and John Ford, and, perhaps most important, witness the major political events of the era through Will Rogers' uniquely perceptive eyes. American Original succeeds most appealingly in bringing Will Rogers before us with all the spontaneity, intimacy, and honesty of a live performance. In it we are given front row seats to the life of a character unabashedly American and unforgettably original.