The Memory of Running

Ron McLarty

When his parents die in a car crash Smithson Ide takes his old Raleigh bicycle and starts cycling. Once he starts, he can't stop and then he's riding across America to recover his sister. Along the way he meets all sorts of people who help or hinder him.

Fever Pitch

Nick Hornby

A famous account of growing up to be a fanatical football supporter. Told through a series of match reports, Fever Pitch has enjoyed enormous critical and commercial success since it was first published in 1992. It has helped to create a new kind of sports writing, and established Hornby as one of the finest writers of his generation.

Arkle: The Classic Story of a Champion

Ivor Herbert

It is 36 years since one of the world's greatest racehorses won racing's premier steeplechase, the Cheltenham Gold Cup, for an unprecedented third time. But even at the start of the 21st century, this one horse has - uniquely in the racing world - retained truly mythical status.

Seconds Out

Martin Kohan

New York, 1923: the Argentine boxer, Luis Angel Firpo, called the wild bull of the Pampas, knocks out of the ring the American Jack Dempsey, heavyweight champion of the world. Dempsey is out of the ring for 17 seconds but is allowed by the US referee to get back in. Each chapter represents a second 'out' and builds to create a powerful reflection on memory and national identity.

Four – Two

David Thomson

This is the story of the World Cup football final between England and West Germany in 1966.  The events recorded in the book span 120 minutes, and it comprises a full narrative of the match. But the chronology allows for diversions: flashback, reverie, autobiography, history, jokes, anecdotes and legends.

Lone Traveller: One Woman, Two Wheels and the World

Anne Mustoe

The fascinating record of Anne Mustoe's second epic journey cycling around the globe from East to West. Using historical routes as her inspiration, Anne followed the ancient Roman roads to Lisbon, travelled across South America with the Conquistadors, pursued Captain Cook over the Pacific to Australia and Indonesia and followed the caravans along the fabled Silk Road from Xi'an to Rome.

The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway

Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway's magnificent fable is the story of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. The Old Man and the Sea won Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. Here, in a perfectly crafted story, is a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man's challenge to the elements in which he lives