In Into the Bear Pit, European team captain Mark James has chosen to speak out, to give a hard-hitting, blow-by-blow account of the tournament that made headlines around the globe.

From being the most dominant club in Scottish football history, Rangers F.C., one of the most famous and powerful names in British sport, was sold to venture capitalist Craig Whyte in 2011 . . . for £1. When Whyte walked through the gates at Ibrox, the club was mired in debt and plagued with a toxic culture which seeped everywhere – from the corridors of power to a sectarian hard core in the stands. The 'great Whyte hope' was touted for a time as Rangers' saviour but he was soon hung out to dry as the fall guy for Rangers' misery as the unthinkable happened. The club was plunged into liquidation and the reformed club suffered the indignity of demotion to the third division, the lowest echelon of Scottish professional football. The demise of Rangers saw Whyte's reputation eviscerated on the pages of every newspaper in the country, his name vilified on radio shows, TV programmes and blogs as every aspect of his professional and personal life was picked over. In 2012 he was arrested and accused of fraud. He was put on trial where he faced the full might and resources of the government for his role in the downfall of the club. Although he was ultimately acquitted of all charges, he had to endure years of false accusations from some media outlets and multiple death threats from obsessed fans. Full of startling revelations, this is the previously untold story of greed, corruption and scandal at the heart of Rangers F.C., told, definitively, by the man who was at the very centre of the storm.

'Could challenge CJ Sansom for dominion' Sunday Times London, 1656: Captain Seeker is back in the city, on the trail of an assassin preparing to strike at the heart of Oliver Cromwell's Republic The Commonwealth is balanced on a knife edge. Royalists and disillusioned former Parliamentarians have united against Oliver Cromwell, now a king in all but name. Three conspirators, representing these factions, plan to assassinate the Lord Protector, paving the way back to the throne for Charles Stuart once and for all. Captain Damian Seeker, meanwhile, is preoccupied by the horrifying discovery in an illegal gambling den of the body of a man ravaged by what is unmistakably a bear. Yet the bears used for baiting were all shot when the sport was banned by Cromwell. So where did this fearsome creature come from, and why would someone use it for murder? With Royalist-turned-Commonwealth-spy Thomas Faithly tracking the bear, Seeker investigates its victim. The trail leads from Kent's coffee house on Cornhill, to a German clockmaker in Clerkenwell, to the stews of Southwark, to the desolate Lambeth Marshes where no one should venture at night. When the two threads of the investigation begin to join, Seeker realises just what - and who - he is up against. The Royalists in exile have sent to London their finest mind and greatest fighter, a man who will stop at nothing to ensure the Restoration. Has Seeker finally met his match?

'Could challenge CJ Sansom for dominion' Sunday Times London, 1656: Captain Seeker is back in the city, on the trail of an assassin preparing to strike at the heart of Oliver Cromwell's Republic The Commonwealth is balanced on a knife edge. Royalists and disillusioned former Parliamentarians have united against Oliver Cromwell, now a king in all but name. Three conspirators, representing these factions, plan to assassinate the Lord Protector, paving the way back to the throne for Charles Stuart once and for all. Captain Damian Seeker, meanwhile, is preoccupied by the horrifying discovery in an illegal gambling den of the body of a man ravaged by what is unmistakably a bear. Yet the bears used for baiting were all shot when the sport was banned by Cromwell. So where did this fearsome creature come from, and why would someone use it for murder? With Royalist-turned-Commonwealth-spy Thomas Faithly tracking the bear, Seeker investigates its victim. The trail leads from Kent's coffee house on Cornhill, to a German clockmaker in Clerkenwell, to the stews of Southwark, to the desolate Lambeth Marshes where no one should venture at night. When the two threads of the investigation begin to join, Seeker realises just what - and who - he is up against. The Royalists in exile have sent to London their finest mind and greatest fighter, a man who will stop at nothing to ensure the Restoration. Has Seeker finally met his match?

Written at the height of Stalin's first "five-year plan" for the industrialization of Soviet Russia and the parallel campaign to collectivize Soviet agriculture, Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit registers a dissonant mixture of utopian longings and despair. Furthermore, it provides essential background to Platonov's parody of the mainstream Soviet "production" novel, which is widely recognized as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century Russian prose. In addition to an overview of the work's key themes, it discusses their place within Platonov's oeuvre as a whole, his troubled relations with literary officialdom, the work's ideological and political background, and key critical responses since the work's first publication in the West in 1973.

Five Nights at Freddy's fans won't want to miss this pulse-pounding collection of three novella-length tales that will keep even the bravest player up at night . . . What do you wish for most? It's a question that Oswald, Sarah, and Millie think they know the answer to. Oswald wishes his summer wasn't so boring, Sarah wishes to be beautiful, and Millie wishes she could just disappear from the face of the earth. But in the twisted world of Five Nights at Freddy's, their hearts' deepest desires have an unexpected cost.In this volume, Five Nights at Freddy's creator Scott Cawthon spins three sinister novella-length stories from different corners of his series' canon, featuring cover art from fan-favorite artist LadyFiszi. Readers beware: This collection of terrifying tales is enough to unsettle even the most hardened Five Nights at Freddy's fans.

A tiny American town's plans for radical self-government overlooked one hairy detail: no one told the bears. Once upon a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take over an American town and completely eliminate its government. In 2004, they set their sights on Grafton, NH, a barely populated settlement with one paved road. When they descended on Grafton, public funding for pretty much everything shrank: the fire department, the library, the schoolhouse. State and federal laws became meek suggestions, scarcely heard in the town's thick wilderness. The anything-goes atmosphere soon caught the attention of Grafton's neighbors: the bears. Freedom-loving citizens ignored hunting laws and regulations on food disposal. They built a tent city in an effort to get off the grid. The bears smelled food and opportunity. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is the sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying tale of what happens when a government disappears into the woods. Complete with gunplay, adventure, and backstabbing politicians, this is the ultimate story of a quintessential American experiment -- to live free or die, perhaps from a bear.

A bloody murder. An open and shut case? In Oliver Cromwell's London, nothing is as it seems - Captain Damian Seeker must battle to find justice, when an innocent man's life hangs in the balance. 'Challenges CJ Sansom for dominion of historical crime' Sunday Times 'The best historical crime novel of the year' Sunday Express London, 1654. Oliver Cromwell is at the height of his power and has declared himself Lord Protector. Yet he has many enemies, at home and abroad. London is a complex web of spies and merchants, priests and soldiers, exiles and assassins. One of the web's most fearsome spiders is Damian Seeker, agent of the Lord Protector. No one knows where Seeker comes from, who his family is, or even his real name. All that is known of him for certain is that he is utterly loyal to Cromwell, and that nothing can be long hidden from him. In the city, coffee houses are springing up, fashionable places where men may meet to plot and gossip. Suddenly they are ringing with news of a murder. John Winter, hero of Cromwell's all-powerful army, is dead, and the lawyer, Elias Ellingworth, found standing over the bleeding body, clutching a knife. Yet despite the damning evidence, Seeker is not convinced of Ellingworth's guilt. He will stop at nothing to bring the killer to justice: and Seeker knows better than any man where to search.

This royal murder mystery set in the early-15th century explodes the romantic myth of the age of chivalry. Hopkin, a pagan, casts a critical eye over the corruption of his age, and introduces the towering characters of the period including King Henry the Fifth, Sir Henry Percy, and Owen Glendower.

So it's kind of like a parlor game, then?... The question is apparently of Ancient Eastern extraction.... It seems to be a gut thing. The answer just feels right and then you come up with reasons.... Given a relatively level playing field -- i.e., water deep enough so that a Shark could maneuver proficiently, but shallow enough so that a Bear could stand and operate with its characteristic dexterity -- who would win in a fight between a Bear and a Shark? In this brilliant satire of our media-saturated culture, the sovereign nation of Las Vegas -- the entertainment capital of the world -- is host to Bear v. Shark II. After a disappointing loss in the first matchup between the land and the sea, the bear is back with a vengeance and out for blood. All of America is obsessed with the upcoming spectacle, so tickets are hard to come by. With an essay entitled "Bear v. Shark: A Reason to Live," young Curtis Norman wins a national writing contest and four tickets to the event. The Normans load up their SUV and embark on a road trip to Vegas. As they head cross-country, the family is besieged by a dizzying barrage of voices: television and radio personalities, public service announcements, bear and shark pundits, Freudians, theologians, and self-published authors, in addition to the Bear v. Shark fanatics, cultists, and resisters they meet at roadside gas stations and restaurants. Overwhelmed by factoids, statistics, and ten-second debates, the Normans -- along with the rest of country -- can't seem to get their facts straight, much less figure out a way to actually communicate with one another. Sound bites and verbal tics predominate; misheard, misunderstood, and just plain mistaken information is absorbed, mangled, and regurgitated to hilarious effect; and the most inane subjects -- from the disappearance of Dutch culture to the Shakespearean bias toward the bear -- are vigorously and obsessively debated. These meaningless exchanges of misinformation leave Mr. Norman disenchanted, world-weary, and ambivalent about the impending show, but the family eventually makes it to Vegas for an apocalyptic and surprisingly emotional ending. Written in quick, commercial-like segments that mirror the media it satirizes, Chris Bachelder's debut is a fiercely funny, razor-sharp novel about the odd intersection of zealotry and trivia, about the barriers to human connection in a society that values entertainment above all else. Through a clever act of novelistic subterfuge, Bachelder makes us laugh at our penchant for absurd and useless information while drawing us into a dazzling spectacle of his own imagination.