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Originally published as BOUNCE: How Champions Are MadeThe ‘Freakonomics of Sport’…What are the real secrets of sporting success, and what lessons do they offer about life in general? Why doesn’t Tiger Woods “choke”? Why are the best figure skaters those that have fallen over the most and why has one small street in Reading produced more top table tennis players than the rest of the country put together.As a three-time Commonwealth table-tennis champion and two-time Olympian, Matthew Syed is perfectly placed to show what it takes to get to the top in any discipline. And as an award-winning writer for the sports and comment pages of the Times – and holder of a prize-winning degree from Oxford University – he knows the facts, the science and the personalities better than anyone.In his book Matt overturns myths and outdated thinking to show “why it is that top sportsmen seem to perceive faster, smarter and deeper than the rest of us.” He draws on the latest in neuroscience and psychology to discover why so many top athletes are superstitious, and meets the Hungarian man who turned his daughters into three of the best chess players in history – and explains how.Along the way, he introduces an extraordinary cast of footballers, cricketers, baseball players, speedskaters, scientists and experts – and interviews the East German athlete who became a man, and her husband. Matthew’s book is crammed full of fascinating stories and telling studies, insights and statistics, all brought together to make a wonderfully thought-provoking read.Matthew’s book is not simply the Freakonomics of sport though – it looks at big questions such as the nature of talent, what kind of practice actually works, how to achieve motivation, drugs in sport (and life) and whether black people really are faster runners. Fresh, ground-breaking and tackling subjects with wide appeal, Matthew’s book is sure to be one of the most talked-about of the year.

A lifetime’s fishing experiences written by one of the UK’s leading fly fishermen.Brian Clarke is one of Britain's best-known fly-fishermen – and one of the world's most widely-read angling authors. His monthly column for ‘The Times’ has become an institution. His widely-ranging, penetrating and often provocative articles for that newspaper and for ‘The Sunday Times’ have been required reading for serious fishermen for over 30 years.This collection of 71 articles and essays distils the author's lifetime experience. The ground he covers is immense: fish and how they behave, tackle and how to choose and use it, flyfishing tactics and strategies, angling history and literature, issues and personalities, environmental threats and the future. The whole book carries the authority of Brian's pioneering work in the sport – and of his groundbreaking studies of trout behaviour, especially. It is informative, thought-provoking, entertaining and beautifully written. ‘On Fishing’ will help anyone who fishes for anything to understand more, to think more and to catch more. It will draw even non-anglers down into the world under water – and to the fascinations that fishermen find there.

High jinx and japes from Soccer Saturday's roving reporter extraordinaire, Chris «Kammy» Kamara, whose boyish enthusiasm and often baffling, at-the-ground football reportage has given him cult status and an army of fans.Over the past decade, football results programme Soccer Saturday has become a television phenomenon, delivering goals and drama via a raft of ex-professional players positioned in TV studios and on precarious gangplanks in rusting stadiums around the country.At the heart of this success is free-wheeling pundit and roving reporter extraordinaire, Chris «Kammy» Kamara, the former footballer-turned-manager-turned-cult hero who has astounded and dumbfounded a legion of armchair fans with his crackpot catchphrases, hyperactive reporting style and Lionel Richie haircut.Mr Unbelievable is his rags to riches tale. As a player, Kammy trawled football's outposts with the likes of Bradford City, Stoke City and Portsmouth where he suffered the slings, arrows and hurled bananas of racial abuse. Later, during the autumn of his career, he played in Howard Wilkinson's swashbuckling Leeds team where he rubbed shoulders with the likes of Eric Cantona and Lee Chapman.On hanging up his boots, he moved into the dugouts at Bradford and Sunderland as manager before joining the Sky football revolution as roving reporter on Soccer Saturday and Goal On Sunday's eagle-eyed analyst, amassing a raft of catchphrases along the way.Mr Unbelievable is a hugely entertaining, moving, shocking and laugh out loud funny story of a genuine cult hero.

Forget Torres, Rooney, Beckham and the like. This is what football is really about. One man’s story of a career in the lower leagues.Chris Hargreaves has been a professional footballer for twenty years. Having started out as a youth team player at Everton he made his debut for Grimsby Town in 1989 and was earmarked as their first million pound sale.It never happened.Instead he went on to play for Scarborough, Hull City, West Brom, Hereford United, Plymouth Argyle, Northampton Town, Brentford, Oxford United and Torquay United.Where's Your Caravan? is the sort of football memoir we don't see enough of these days – an account of life in the lower leagues. It takes us from his wild youth – lots of sex and drugs and drink – through to domesticated family man – school runs and flatpack furniture with plenty of football in between.