Biographies Memoirs Sports

The Stig gets his kit off and reveals how he came to be Top Gear's iconic racing driver and so much more - including what it's like to thrash an Aston Martin DBS, train for the Army and face the terror of Jeremy Clarkson's underwear…When the Black Stig disappeared off the end of an aircraft carrier in 2003, we were introduced to The White Stig. Faster. Stranger. Harder to keep clean. And ever since, millions have wondered – who is The Man in the White Suit? They're about to find out.

Entropy is a law of nature, the one predicting that "things fall apart." Spend enough time outdoors and it will eventually happen to you. When it does, who will pick up the pieces? Who will glue them back together? Professional search and rescue volunteers leave work, home, and their cozy beds to rescue people on the worst day of their lives. They buy their own gear, pay their own gas, and ask nothing more than to make a contribution to the lives of strangers who they'll probably never meet again.

Timothy M. Gay writes that four-time major champion Rory McIlroy is "golf's ageless Opie Taylor," a superstar whose charm transcends national boundaries and enlivens the game. His swing is so powerful that Tiger Woods is teaching his own son to mimic Rory's action. But a charismatic persona and a pretty swing don't translate into winning championships. Rory has failed to win another major and fallen short of achieving the career Grand Slam. Rory Land tells the saga of a compassionate superstar living in a world where "money has no conscience."

Carlo Ancelotti is one of the greatest managers of all time, with five Champions League titles to his name. Yet his approach could not be further from the aggressive theatricals favoured by many of his rivals. His understated style has earned him the fierce loyalty of players like David Beckham, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Cristiano Ronaldo.

FROM THE SHADOW is the story of a country boy who endured a series of tragic events, leaving him alone in a big city. The cruel hand of fate had one more blow: a young offenders' institution. There, in his darkest hour, it would be the bars he lifted, not those that bound him, which would finally change the trajectory of his life - forever. Dorian Yates' disarming honesty would lead to a reader of an early manuscript saying of FROM THE SHADOW, "I had to force myself to put it down."

In 1997, as every schoolchild knows, Tiger Woods won the Masters by the largest margin in history, becoming the first Black player to win a major championship. Four years later, the world watches with breathless anticipation as he returns to Augusta National, aiming for a milestone no other golfer has ever achieved: four professional Grand Slam triumphs in a row. In The Tiger Slam, Kevin Cook delivers a gripping, inside-the-ropes account of an astonishing streak of victories that left Woods’s rivals scrambling to keep up.

Carroll Shelby wasn’t born to run. He was born to race - some of the fastest cars ever to tear up a speedway. The exciting new feature film Ford v Ferrari - starring Matt Damon as Shelby and Christian Bale as fellow racer Ken Miles - immortalizes the small-town Texas boy who won the notorious Le Mans 24-hour endurance challenge and changed the face of auto racing with the legendary Shelby Cobra. But there’s much more to his high-velocity, history-making story.

The award-winning creator of popular survival stories turns his attention to his own real life adventures in Minnesota and Alaska as he prepares for the grueling Iditarod sled dog race.

From his battles with alcoholism and gambling addiction to marital problems (his fourth and current wife is facing money-laundering charges) and a highly publicized breakdown during a nationally televised tournament, John Daly has hit into his share of hazards. Daly’s play-it-as-it-lies approach drives a thrillingly candid memoir of a larger-than-life athlete battling the links, addiction, depression, weight problems, and, perhaps worst of all, divorce lawyers.

Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than $200. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, atop Maine's Mount Katahdin, she sang the first verse of "America, the Beautiful" and proclaimed, "I said I'll do it, and I've done it."

Deep down, Mark Cavendish thought he was finished. After illness, setbacks and clinical depression, the once fastest man in the world had been written off by most. And at the age of 36, even he believed his explosive cycling career would fade out with a whimper. The Manxman hadn't won a single Grand Tour stage in Italy, Spain or France since 2016. But then came his incredible resurrection at the 2021 Tour de France.

In this superb and authorised portrait of Räikkönen, Kari Hotakainen gets to reveal the side of the man that few beyond his close family and friends have ever seen. Enigmatic and private, Ferrari’s former world champion driver rarely opens up to outsiders, but he granted Hotakainen exclusive access to his world and to his way of thinking. It ensures that this will be a book that will delight all fans of motorsport who have long revered the Finn.

On April 13, 1986, ten-year-old Tiger Woods watches his idol, Jack Nicklaus, win his record sixth Masters. Just over a decade later, chants of “Ti-ger, Ti-ger!” ring out as the twenty- one-year-old wins his first Green Jacket. He blazes an incredible path, winning fourteen major titles (second only to Nicklaus himself) by the time he’s thirty- three, smashing records and raising standards. Then come multiple public scandals and potentially career-ending injuries.

Los Angeles native and longtime sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times, Scott Howard-Cooper draws on more than a hundred interviews and extensive access to many of the principal figures, including Wooden’s family, to deliver a rich narrative that reveals the turmoil at the heart of this storied college basketball program.

Across Islands and Oceans is the memoir of 25 year-old James Baldwin and his epic two-year, solo circumnavigation in Atom, his trusty but aging 28-foot sailboat.

Richard Hammond describes his childhood and adolescence and the emergence of the adrenalin junkie, the first ridiculous stunts on his tricycle, and an increasing and near obsessive attraction to speed and the smell of petrol. He finds an attractive girl, Mindy, who shares his interests and helps him organise his high-speed life.

We are living in the Wild West of college sports. Name, Image and Likeness endorsements, the transfer portal, collectives, conference realignment, the powerful influence of media companies have all rendered the notion of amateur athletics a quaint relic of the past, replaced by a Brave New World where money and self-interest rule. The Price is a sweeping, in-depth, thought-provoking look at an inflection point in big-time college football.

Hardest Geezer, Russ Cook, is the first person to ever run the entire length of Africa. From his starting point in Cape Agulhas, South Africa, through sandstorms in the Sahara Desert, rainforests, mountain ranges and long empty roads stretched out for miles in front of him, Russ ran the equivalent of 386 marathons before finally crossing the finish line in Tunisia 50 weeks later.

Pete Sampras is arguably the greatest tennis player ever, a man whose hard-nosed work ethic led to an unprecedented number one world ranking for 286 weeks, and whose prodigious talent made possible a record-setting 14 Grand Slam titles. While his more vocal rivals sometimes grabbed the headlines, Pete always preferred to let his racket do the talking. Until now.

When we first meet the young man at the center of this extraordinary and moving story, he is one of 13 children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or any of the things a child might learn in school. And he has no serious experience playing organized football.