Our second release in June was RIPPA! the second football novel from P.J. Laverty.
Set in the late 1980s - after Craig Johnston but before the likes of Mark Viduka, Harry Kewell, Tim Cahill, et al made their names in English football - it is about Joey Rippa, a young football-playing surf-loving, pot-smoking, guitar-strumming 19-year-old from coastal Western Australia who is 'discovered' by the manager of West Ham while on a pre-season trip to Perth.
Joey is offered a contract and heads to the UK, mostly to help his father meet his debts and his uncle get out of homelessness, but the West Ham manager is sacked the day Joey arrives. He is promptly loaned to Middleby United in the most land-locked town in the UK, where he is faced with isolation, loneliness, terrible cuisine and a dressing room and stadium of home fans who think of him, at best, as an Aussie novelty and, at worst, a pathetic joke.
It's a ripper of a read. Find out what happens next for yourself!