'Cinderella', I Wish!

'Cinderella', I Wish! is a powerful and very compelling true life story from Dominique Deveraux's ife.

As a young black child she was living a very enjoyable life with her white foster parents who loved and adored her.

But then disaster strikes, as Nanny dies and she has to be removed from the home where she knew only love and she enters a new world of heartache and troubles.

She is placed into a new home, but rather than love and compassion she is subjected to abuse and misery.

Her life dissolves into one of trauma and fear. She is subjected to abuse, suffers domestic violence and even witnesses murder.

Can Dominique learn to be her own true self, again? Can she find love in her own heart for not only others but also for her own self, too?

Can she deal with people who lie to get what they want, use violence and threats to control those they pretend to love?

There's a lot for her to contend with, an unexpected but welcome pregnancy, the problems of living with ME and the career changes this creeping, vile disease can bring about (REVIEWER'S NOTE: I have personal experience of this little understood but potentially devastating health complaint)  and a variety of other issues that seem to prove the old adage that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

It's an amazing memoir and from an almost little orphan girl without a glass slipper or a prince to an agony aunt and a key manager for 30 years in Children's Social Care Management, I think that Dominique did very well indeed with her life. Just proves that nobody needs a glass slipper, after all!

The book is published by Matador at £9.99.

How to Become a Football Agent: The Guide

This is the second edition of How to Become a Football Agent: The Guide, is written bu Dr Erkut Sogut LL.M, Jack Pentol-Levy and Charlie Pentol-Levy.

The three experts behind behind Football Agent Education have brought all of their experience and their network to put together a guide of critical information that every football agent must know in order to ave any measure of success for his or her clients and themselves.

There are unique insights, detailed information and hints and tips on how to be a successful football agent that you just will not find anywhere else.

It's built on their highly successful first book and now contains expanded chapters, more practical guidance and examples.

There's a highly informative forward by footballing ace legend Robert Pires, plus insightful comments and advice from top working agents who represent the top flights of elite footballers, too.

It now includes the valued opinions of four members on FIFA's select football agent commission. There are also real examples of contracts and a number of relevant case studies for readers to learn from.

The authors are very clear about the role of the modern agent. Long gone are the days when the agent just turned up, got the contract signed aand went away again to repeat the same performance next season. Now a successful and motivated agent must take active steps to work with their clients all year round, building their client into a top international brand and encouraging them to make the most of their potential as an international athlete.

If you are a footballer, the parent of a young footballer, an agent or a manager of a football team, this is a book that you must have a copy of.

It's published by Matador on 28th July at £13.99.

Mama's Got a Brand New Bag

Mama's Got a Brand New Bag is the debut novel of Hope Lovejoy.

It tells the story of Mama and her brand new bag. It's a stoma bag. She required a stoma bag because a surgeon, who was tasked with the simple job of removing a polyp from her intestines made a catastrophic blunder that caused the rupture of her colon.

So now, after a different and perhaps more competent, surgeon has cleaned her insides up and repaired the damage and inserted a coma, Aki is facing life with a stoma.

It gurgles, it grumbles and causes Aki no end of concerns common to most stoma patients. What if it bursts when I am out? What of the dreadful fuggy smell it gives off? What if I roll over in the night and squash it, causing it to burst? And if this happens at 3am, the clean up crew (husband and wife) have to spring into action.

Although the novel is written in a way that is intended to amuse, it does so in a way that does not take away the dignity of the protagonist, Aki who is Japanese, or her husband, Peter, who is English.

The novel takes  jaundiced look at surgeons who do not make mistakes and who try to blame everyone else  when things go wrong.

If you have a brand new bag, you might find comfort in this highly original and thought provoking book.

It's published by Matador at £9.99

Against the Odds

Against the Odds is subtitled: Elizabeth Studdert, a life in carving. It tells the fascinating life story of Elizabeth Studdert who is  truly original sculptor.

You might not have heard of Elizabeth Studdert I certainly hadn't, but this book, by her sister, author and journalist, Caroline Studdert, sets out to correct this bewildering paradox, a sculptor who is both highly gifted yet, relatively unknowing.

The story of Elizabeth Studdert, from the slightly "regal" Waterford aristocratic society (the family were not actually viewed as fitting in, being 'outsiders') to her marriage to a Roman Catholic which was considered by some as less than suitable, the complications that an Anglo-Irish heritage could bring, to the financial problems that she faced and the problematic relationship with her mother, the book looks at the various difficulties that Elizabeth overcame in order to be what she wanted to be, a sculptor.

The examples of Elizabeth's works in a variety of materials from soapstone to alabaster, to wood, metal and resins are truly remarkable. And they are from sizes tiny to titanic, one might say.

They show a fluidity in style and form that means each piece of art is imbued with its own living soul, raw emotions radiate from every piece.

Some of the sculptures the viewer might want to become, some of the sculptures the viewer may very well feel they already are.

I'd love to own a piece of art from Elizabeth Studdert. The next best thing, however,is a copy of this hardback book from Matador, at a very reasonable £15.00.

You can learn more about Elizabeth by visiting her website, here:- http://www.elizabethstuddert.co.uk/index.html