New Releases by Christine Brennan

Instant New York Times Bestseller! A news-making and electrifying portrait of sports phenomenon Caitlin Clark, whose dramatic ascendance in college basketball and now in the WNBA has captured the attention of media and fans unlike any other female team-sport athlete in history—by award-winning USA TODAY columnist and television commentator Christine Brennan. America has never seen an athlete quite like Caitlin Clark. Attracting record-shattering attendance and TV ratings, she has riveted the nation with her famous logo threes and thrilling passes and changed how fans across the country view women’s sports. Drawing on dozens of extensive interviews and exclusive, behind-the-scenes reporting, veteran journalist Christine Brennan narrates Clark’s rise—including the formative experiences that led to her scoring more points than any woman or man in major college basketball history—and delivers fascinating new details about Clark’s Olympic snub by USA Basketball, the safety concerns around her that led to charter flights for all players, the WNBA’s lack of preparation for heightened national scrutiny, and troubling outbreaks of jealousy and resentment as a white player became the top story in a predominantly Black league. The 2024 season was a watershed. Always taking the high road in the face of criticism, Clark proceeded to write herself into WNBA record books as one of the league’s most talented rookies ever. And her winning persona—on full display whether surrounded by children begging for autographs or reporters hanging on her every word—made Clark such a fan favorite that increasingly larger arenas needed to be found to accommodate the hordes who traveled hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of miles to watch her play. Clark arrived as a sports and cultural icon a little more than fifty years after the passage of Title IX, the 1972 law that opened the floodgates for girls and women to play sports in America. On Her Game is a sports story, certainly, but it’s also the story of a nation falling in love with what it has created because of that law—millions of new athletes, led by the magical Caitlin Clark.

From the best-known and most widely read woman sports columnist in the United States comes a remarkable memoir of a father and a daughter, the story of a girl who would turn her love for sports into a trailblazing career. Christine Brennan grew up in Toledo, Ohio, spending her summers playing with the boys on her block, memorizing baseball statistics, accompanying her dad to countless baseball and football games, and falling in love with everything about sports. While other girls were playing with Barbie dolls, Chris was collecting baseball cards and listening to the radio for the play-by-play accounts of her favorite teams. The eldest of four children, Chris was her father's daughter from the beginning. For a girl growing up in the 1960s and '70s, in the days before Title IX changed the playing fields of America, there were few opportunities to play organized sports. But Jim Brennan encouraged his daughter to believe she could play anything she wanted to, and when she couldn't be on the field, he was by her side in the stands -- she always thought the seat next to her father was the best seat in the house -- usually cheering for the underdog, and making sure Chris knew there was a place for her in the world of sports. In her warm and inspiring memoir, the first of its kind by a female sports journalist, Brennan takes readers from her neighborhood ball fields to the press boxes and locker rooms of stadiums around the world. Guided by her father's unfailing sense of loyalty, honor, and fairness, at the age of twenty-two she became the first female sportswriter for The Miami Herald, and in 1985 was the first woman to cover the Washington Redskins as a staff writer for The Washington Post. Over the past quarter century, Brennan has reported on many of the biggest stories in sports, and led the coverage of both the 1994 Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan saga and the pairs figure-skating scandal at the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics. Her USA Today column on Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters, triggered a nationwide debate about the club's lack of female members. Told in the spirited, friendly voice that readers of her column have come to love, Best Seat in the House is the heartwarming chronicle of a girl who came of age as women's sports were coming of age, encouraged every step of the way by her beloved father.

Figure skating is the most beautiful and mysterious of all sports. When the skaters are on the ice, every twitch of a muscle and every slip of a skate blade is visible for the world to see. In Inside Edge, Christine Brennan chronicles—for the first time—a season on the skating circuit, intimately portraying the lives, on and off the ice, of the sport's current and upcoming stars. Woven into the narrative are stories of figure skating luminaries—including Peggy Fleming, Janet Lynn, Katarina Witt, Brian Boitano, Scott Hamilton, Kristi Yamaguchi, Nancy Kerrigan, Oksana Baiul, Michelle Kwan, Rudy Galindo, and Tara Lipinski. Revealing the backstage conflicts high-profile figure skaters face, and the ambition that drives them, Brennan also tells the stories of their families, of improbable rises to the top, and of wasted talents. If skaters are perfect, they can become international heroes. But if they fall, if they miss a three-revolution jump on a quarter-inch blade of steel, the despair is theirs alone. This is their life on the edge, where decades of training culminate in little more than four crucial minutes on the ice. There is no other sport like it. There is no other story like theirs.

Walk in the woods and what do you see? Sticks, shrubs and leaves on the tree - take this path, come hike with me, we'll see how beautiful nature can be.

In a voice of innocence and candor, Christine Brennan Mulvaney shares the joys and heartbreaks of being the youngest of nine in Ireland, losing her mother at the age of 2, being separated from her siblings as they went off to America, and then finding herself living with distant family in America at the age of 9. Share in her fears and cry at her trials and tribulations as you find yourself enamored with her story and her sheer determination to make it through every hardship with hope and optimism.

The tennis star recounts her life and athletic career, from childhood, through her athletic successes, to her life after professional tennis, and discusses the life lessons that she learned at every stage along the way.

This book celebrates 25 years of the touring skating show Champions on Ice, with an up-close look at the 2002 Olympic Tour, featuring Salt Lake City gold medallists Sarah Hughes, Alexei Yagudin, and Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat, and many others. Christine Brennan of USA Today has travelled with the tour and spent time with skating’s superstars behind the scenes to learn what makes them special and what makes them tick. She follows the tour to present a “day-in-the-life” view, from wake-up call to tuck-in at night, from quiet moments to clowning around, to a packed arena and showtime on ice. In addition to this year’s tour, Brennan brings moments alive from every year, presenting a “Who’s Who” of modern figure skating. The story of Champions on Ice mirrors the development of figure skating itself, and Brennan brings this to life when she describes fan passions, the art and craft of selecting the right music for a routine, the changing role of coaches and choreographers, and the impact of the “Russian invasion” that changed the face of North American figure skating in the early 1990s. Also profiled is Tom Collins, the impresario who created Champions on Ice when he put together the first tour of Olympic-level skaters in the mid-1970s. Today, his 2002 Olympic Tour will play 93 dates from coast to coast, with a further winter tour booked for early 2003. Collins attributes his success to creating a comfortable family environment for his talented skaters, and it is this sense of fun and the sheer joy of skating that comes through on every page of Champions on Ice.

Respected sports journalist Christine Brennan tells the riveting tales of the world's best figure skaters during the most intense year of their young lives. The story opens with the 1997 U.S. national championships, when Michelle Kwan, the overwhelming favorite for the 1998 Olympic gold medal, leaves the rink in tears. Enter Tara Lipinski, a seventy-five-pound jumping machine -- soon to become the youngest world skating champion.Chronicling the year leading up to and including the 1998 Olympic Games, Edge of Glory offers portraits of the famous and infamous, the hopefuls and has-beens -- Nancy Kerrigan, Oksana Baiul, Tonya Harding, Elvis Stojko, Todd Eldredge, Ilia Kulik, and many more. Edge of Glory also takes the reader behind the scenes of the sport: the aggressive sports agents, the career-fostering coaches, the eager reporters, the choreographers, and the attentive, stern judges. Ultimately, Edge of Glory is about the athletes themselves. What drives these skaters to a profession that promises retirement at such a young age? How do they survive in a sport where one fall decides it all? What do they fear? And, most importantly, who will win, and who will lose?

The youngest U.S. Open singles champion in history tells about surviving the challenges that exist off the tennis court and shares how she was able to put her losses behind her and find new meaning and new rewards. 50,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo. Tour.