UNAUTHORIZED, Debi Thomas What Really Happened, is an amazing tale of behind the scenes interviews that were conducted by journalist, writer, & award-winning writer, Carol Denise Mitchell. During two-years of phone interviews with Debi Thomas and Debi’s fiancé Jamie Looney, Mitchell got to know the superstar well enough to uncover secrets that Debi Thomas had yet to divulge to the general public. Mitchell uncovers the truth about Debi’s big losses in the 1988 Olympics up to how her medical career ended up failing. The author is stunned to learn that Debi Thomas felt she was not meant to win the gold in the 1988 Olympics. Moreover, Mitchell uncovers extensive research on why Debi, who openly dared to “Question Authority” seemingly at her peril, incurred many of her losses and how, and the author is unwilling to hold anything back. Readers will be appalled at how extensively Debi Thomas suffered Domestic Violence; and, how she was willing to let it all out to the author. Mitchell introduces surprising information about the skating star, while she ensures that it is Debi telling her own story! This earthshattering book will leave readers on the edge of their seats. Readers will be happy to hear Debi telling her own story throughout this fantastic writing effort.Carol Denise Mitchell is sensitive and authentic on the topic of what happened to her friend, Olympic champion, Debra Janine Thomas. Her goal is for readers to walk away from the book feeling that it was Debi telling her own story. In a shocking scene when Debi’s fiancé, Jamie Looney puts a gun to Debi’s head, Mitchell is mindful of Debi’s potential state-of-mind in not being able to tell her own story. Mitchell wants the name, Debra Janine Thomas to be inducted into the archives of great fame. Debi Thomas should be proud of this great writing effort. The book will do the superstar, no harm!

From the best-known and most widely read woman sports columnist in the United States comes a remarkable memoir of a father and a daughter, the story of a girl who would turn her love for sports into a trailblazing career. Christine Brennan grew up in Toledo, Ohio, spending her summers playing with the boys on her block, memorizing baseball statistics, accompanying her dad to countless baseball and football games, and falling in love with everything about sports. While other girls were playing with Barbie dolls, Chris was collecting baseball cards and listening to the radio for the play-by-play accounts of her favorite teams. The eldest of four children, Chris was her father's daughter from the beginning. For a girl growing up in the 1960s and '70s, in the days before Title IX changed the playing fields of America, there were few opportunities to play organized sports. But Jim Brennan encouraged his daughter to believe she could play anything she wanted to, and when she couldn't be on the field, he was by her side in the stands -- she always thought the seat next to her father was the best seat in the house -- usually cheering for the underdog, and making sure Chris knew there was a place for her in the world of sports. In her warm and inspiring memoir, the first of its kind by a female sports journalist, Brennan takes readers from her neighborhood ball fields to the press boxes and locker rooms of stadiums around the world. Guided by her father's unfailing sense of loyalty, honor, and fairness, at the age of twenty-two she became the first female sportswriter for The Miami Herald, and in 1985 was the first woman to cover the Washington Redskins as a staff writer for The Washington Post. Over the past quarter century, Brennan has reported on many of the biggest stories in sports, and led the coverage of both the 1994 Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan saga and the pairs figure-skating scandal at the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics. Her USA Today column on Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters, triggered a nationwide debate about the club's lack of female members. Told in the spirited, friendly voice that readers of her column have come to love, Best Seat in the House is the heartwarming chronicle of a girl who came of age as women's sports were coming of age, encouraged every step of the way by her beloved father.

The sixteen original essays in this collection cover influential and famous rivalries from a variety of sports, and illustrate with is common to any rivalry: equally matched opponents that are often decidedly different in race and culture, political and societal ideology, personality, geography, or religion. The competitive impulse and these differences combine to form a singular mix intensified by fans and the media.

Such notable women athletes as Debi Thomas, Picabo Street, Cassie Campbell, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Peggy Fleming, Michelle Akers, and Bonnie Blair, share their stories and thoughts on sport, competition, and commitment.

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.

What's the point of Brian O'Bunion? His teacher hates him. His schoolmates ignore him. His dad hasn't bought him Coco Pops for two years, one month and nineteen days. He feels like disappearing ... until his classmates actually do. Then Brian uncovers a trail that leads to a terrifying bug-eating thug who's bent on revenge. A buzzing tale of friendship, courage and Curly Wurlys.

Another mad-cap adventure from the author of Dead Hairy. Welcome to the Amazon, where heads shrink and villains slink! Media-savvy author with connections in the children's book world Established fan-base from Dead Hairy Author available for innovative in-store events Following a hair-raising adventure last summer, Abbie Hartley can't wait to join her friend Perdita on the trip of a lifetime. Their destination? The Amazon jungle. Their mission? To find the lost wife of their friend Fernando. There's only one problem. Fernando and his wife are shrunken heads ... and the Amazon jungle is huge. Oh, and another one. Squashy Grandma insists on coming, with her shopping bag on wheels and her pet wig. Oh, and just one more. Abbie's arch-enemy Dr Hubris Klench, burger-on-legs and villain extraordinaire, is lurking in the undergrowth with some very wicked tricks up his very wide sleeve.

Of all winter sports, none is so widely watched and commented upon by the media as figure skating, which is often considered the Winter Olympics' centerpiece. This critical text examines the ways in which media attention has gradually altered and affected the sport, from the early appearances of Sonja Henie, to skating's gradual audience growth via television, and to the ramifications of the scandals in the 1994 and 2002 Olympics. The topic is illuminated by more than 30 interviews with commentators, skaters, producers, directors and others. In addition to numerous photos, illustrations show the compulsory figures for which "figure skating" got its name, as well as a sample of the charted-out "camera blocking" for TV directors. Appendices include collected anecdotes from early broadcasting experiences; a profile of broadcaster Jim McKay; and commentary from Carol Heiss on her 1961 musical Snow White and the Three Stooges.

Figure skating is the most beautiful and mysterious of all sports. When the skaters are on the ice, every twitch of a muscle and every slip of a skate blade is visible for the world to see. In Inside Edge, Christine Brennan chronicles—for the first time—a season on the skating circuit, intimately portraying the lives, on and off the ice, of the sport's current and upcoming stars. Woven into the narrative are stories of figure skating luminaries—including Peggy Fleming, Janet Lynn, Katarina Witt, Brian Boitano, Scott Hamilton, Kristi Yamaguchi, Nancy Kerrigan, Oksana Baiul, Michelle Kwan, Rudy Galindo, and Tara Lipinski. Revealing the backstage conflicts high-profile figure skaters face, and the ambition that drives them, Brennan also tells the stories of their families, of improbable rises to the top, and of wasted talents. If skaters are perfect, they can become international heroes. But if they fall, if they miss a three-revolution jump on a quarter-inch blade of steel, the despair is theirs alone. This is their life on the edge, where decades of training culminate in little more than four crucial minutes on the ice. There is no other sport like it. There is no other story like theirs.

College programmer Stranger is an anxiety-ridden over-thinker who takes psychoactive drugs while contemplating the heretical philosophical gambit of techno-anarchy to Satanism. Masking this underlying nerdiness with the public persona of an alpha-male heavy drinking frat star, he's coming to age as a mixed kid whose parents were born during the Civil Rights movement; one generation removed, he is increasingly forced to confront the myths of a post-racial America. Oh, and because these daily identity crises didn't cause enough trouble, Stranger falls in love for the first time, despite never having had a girlfriend or sex sober. He's become enthralled with the demure, soulfully morbid Gunny, who not only has a boyfriend but self-esteem issues that manifest in the self-harm practice of cutting, and she isn't exactly ready to leave the one guy who's supported her throughout the addiction. But don't worry, Stranger doesn't navigate this collegiate underworld alone, he has a whole cast of equally brilliant but disturbed misfits for his hedonistic, poetical high-romance odyssey. And throughout the chronicles of these madcap, absurdist tales, Stranger learns of the limits to love and the pains to be temporary, of failing friendships and intimate escapades, of youth and the aging world.