As an expansion Major League Soccer team, the Orlando City Soccer Club marked the return of professional soccer to Florida for the first time since 2001, selling out the sixty-thousand-seat Citrus Bowl for its home opener and going on to have the second‑highest home attendance for the 2015 and 2016 seasons. It was the successful culmination of a nine-year process orchestrated by the team's owner, Phil Rawlins, who sold his successful sales consultancy company for a shot at sports ownership and a chance to tap into America's growing interest in pro soccer. Rawlins was relentless in building a franchise from the ground up, overcoming crippling setbacks, devious politics, and near financial ruin. Underpinning his efforts was a deep commitment to re-creating the tribal passion and community spirit of his hometown team in the United Kingdom, Stoke City, for which he served as board member for fourteen years. The payoff was the Orlando City Soccer Club, an attractive new team that galvanized the region. The subsequent acquisition of international superstar Ricardo Kaká catapulted the club to celebrity status and ensured that its debut season defied expectations. Defying Expectations gives insight into the challenges faced on the road to success, challenges through which Rawlins has remained focused on the six core values that he and his wife formulated at their kitchen table years ago, continuing to foster a community institution that gives back as much as it receives.

Two friends Electra (a self proclaimed Cyberpunk) and her Magnoball playing best friend Zena are fairly ordinary girls living it up in the Lunar City. All their needs taken care of by the all powerful Plex and their only worries are concerned with how to get a boyfriend. All that changes, however, when a stranger comes to visit in the shape of a young man called Guy. As events unfold the girls are thrust into the middle of an interplanetary conspiracy where everything that was once certain is now in doubt.When her friend goes missing, Electra travels to Earth to find a society very different from her own though finds herself strangely drawn to it. But that's just the start of the adventure and before long she is encountering among other things, alligators, vampire bats and invisibility body paint!And who is the mysterious young girl of whom the prophecies speak who, it is foretold, will usher in the New Age?

With the state tournament finals just around the corner, the crosstown rivalry between the Edison High Eddies and the Winfield Wildcats heats up. Toby and Walter, second-string Edison sophomores, are just along for the ride. But when a series of pranks led by the star seniors goes too far, will these second-string players be able to fill the shoes of the starters? Or did their teammates' bad behavior cost the Eddies the state title?

A classic NFL/civil rights story—the showdown between the Washington Redskins and the Kennedy White House In Showdown, sports historian Thomas G. Smith captures a striking moment, one that held sweeping implications not only for one team’s racist policy but also for a sharply segregated city and for the nation as a whole. Part sports history, part civil rights story, this compelling and untold narrative serves as a powerful lens onto racism in sport, illustrating how, in microcosm, the fight to desegregate the Redskins was part of a wider struggle against racial injustice in America.

The epic clash of an Irish-American, Italian, and Onondaga-Canadian that jump-started the first marathon mania and heralded the modern age in sports The eyes of the world watched as three runners—dirt poor Johnny Hayes, who used to run barefoot through the streets of New York City; candymaker Dorando Pietri; and the famed Tom Longboat—converged for an epic battle at the 1908 London Olympics. The incredible finish was contested the world over when Pietri, who initially ran the wrong way upon entering the stadium at Shepherd's Bush, finished first but was disqualified for receiving aid from officials after collapsing just shy of the finish line, thus giving the title to runner-up Hayes. In the midst of anti-American sentiment, Queen Alexandra awarded a special cup to Pietri, who became an international celebrity and inspired one of Irving Berlin's first songs. In Showdown at Shepherd's Bush, David Davis recalls a time when runners braved injurious roads with slips of leather for shoes and when marathon mania became a worldwide obsession. Standing next to Cait Murphy's Crazy '08 as an invaluable look at a bygone sporting era, Showdown at Shepherd's Bush is a dramatic narrative aimed at the recordsetting number of marathon participants in the United States (more than 500,000 in 2010!) and other running enthusiasts, and timed nicely for the return of the Olympics to London in 2012.

The Wizards of Spin is a series of satirical stories based on real news events and the celebrity media stars who deliver the headlines and commentary to America each day. With so much interest in news and talk show celebrities, author John Ruane has created these fictional stories to capture the wackiness of the current star-crazed news cycle. Besides O'Reilly and Olbermann, stories are based on Oprah, Chris Matthews, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Matt Lauer, Diane Sawyer, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Katie Couric and many more.