BRIAN READE

This book includes virtually all of Beardsley's mature work, culled from a wide variety of sources. It enables us to distinguish between the genuine Beardsley and the hundreds of spurious pastiches attributed to him. Perhaps the key to his great popularity is his consummate ability with line and shape and his use of space. His defiant personality projected itself in black and white, not in three-dimensional realism. If some of his contemporaries saw it differently the fact remains he is now regarded as an artist draughtsman of brilliant invention. This is Aubrey Beardsley's centenary year and is marked by a major exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Sick Mick is the laugh-out-loud funny, debut satirical novel from acclaimed journalist Brian Reade.A much-loved member of the Royal Family sinks into a coma after being struck on the head by a stray pergola beam at the Chelsea Flower Show.Two hundred miles away in Liverpool, as Britain reels and the national media goes into morbid overdrive, comedian Mick OShea cracks a series of gags at the Royals expense. In the face of hyped-up public outrage, Mick finds himself on the end of a media lynching and a police manhunt as he becomes Public Enemy Number One.Sick Mick is a darkly humorous tale about a man caught in the culture wars crossfire. Micks quest for redemption takes him on a rollercoaster of absurdity involving a high-speed dash in a Beatles Magical Mystery Tour taxi, a Dog Day Afternoon tribute act and drama in a Harley Street erectile dysfunction clinic.

There have been football books which have told their tale through the partisan heart of a besotted fan, and those that have dissected their subject through the scientific mind of an objective writer. But rarely does one fuse the blind passion of a lifelong supporter with the cold eye of an award-winning journalist in the way 44 Years With The Same Bird does.That bird is the Liver Bird, and on the surface this book is a pitch-side view of the entire modern era of Britains most successful football club. It is Brian Reades take on the extraordinary stories behind the 48 trophies he has seen Liverpool lift since watching them en route to their first ever FA Cup win in 1965, right through to the Champions League defeat in Athens in 2007. It takes in all of the big nights that propelled the club to five European Cups, three UEFA Cups, twelve titles, countless domestic cup triumphs, bitter failures, the tragic disasters in Sheffield and Brussels, as well as the barren years of the late 60s and the 90s.But the book goes far deeper than that. Its about how football allowed a father who was separated from his son to forge a precious bond. How a football club can make a city that is dying on its knees keep believing in itself. How you should never, as a professional, get too close to your heroes. How being part of a disaster at a football match (Hillsborough) can leave you a mental wreck, unwilling to carry on, but how witnessing a miracle on a football pitch (Istanbul) makes you realize that no matter how low you sink, you should never give in.

AN EPIC SWINDLE is the inside story of how Liverpool FC came within hours of being re-possessed by the banks after the shambolic 44-month reign of American owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett. It is the tale of a civil war that dragged Britains most successful football club to its knees, through the High Court and almost into administration. Players Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher tell of their anger at the broken promises, as well as their pain at watching loyal fans in open revolt. Manager, chief executive, board members, leading fans and journalists reveal the turmoil at a revered sporting institution run by two men at war with each other, who trampled Liverpools cherished traditions into the gutter. No story sums up the naked greed at the heart of modern football quite like Hicks and Gilletts attempt to turn a buck at Liverpool. No-one has had as much access to the truth, or tells it with as much passion, wit and insight as Brian Reade. AN EPIC SWINDLE is the riveting story of how close one of the great football clubs came to financial implosion.