Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland. It is a city of culture, of impressive architecture, enterprise and endeavour, and is one of warm-hearted, generous people. But it also has a dark side. Beneath the busy streets, the Victorian sandstone and urban trendiness lies a black heart that beats in rhythm with the roar of the traffic and the echo of footsteps on concrete. It is a black heart pumped by greed and lust, violence and murder. And it has beaten since the city first sprang up on that dear, green place on the banks of the Molendinar Burn. This is the epic story of Glasgow crime. Beginning in 1624 when the Tolbooth was built at Glasgow Cross to house the courts and town jail, author Douglas Skelton covers four centuries of Glasgow's hidden history, tracing the formation of the first paid police force in Britain, the Black Assizes of the circuit court and the formation of the city's own High Court of Justiciary. Here you will find the pimps and pushers, gangsters and gangleaders, rioters and robbers who flooded the veins of the city. Famous felons rub shoulders with their less notorious, but equally vicious, counterparts. Here also are the thief-takers, cops, lawyers and judges who tried to stem the gushing flow, some with more success than others. These stories may not be what the City Fathers would like to see on Glasgow's CV, but they are as much a part of its traditions and its legacy as the fish, the bell and the tree.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Pieces comes a novel about love and loss and learning how to continue when it feels like you're surrounded by darkness. "A rare and powerful novel." --Karen M. McManus, New York Times bestselling author of One of Us Is Lying and Two Can Keep a Secret Tiger's life changed with a simple phone call. Her mother has died. That's when darkness descended on her otherwise average life. Tiger's mother never talked about her father, and with no grandparents or aunts or uncles, her world is packed into a suitcase and moved to a foster home. And another. And another. Until hope surfaces in the shape of . . . a sister? Sometimes family comes in forms you don't recognize. But can Tiger learn to make friends with the darkness before it swallows her whole? "Stunning and beautifully written."-HelloGiggles "Breathtaking and heartbreaking." --Jennifer Niven, New York Times bestselling author of All the Bright Places

Keeping the streets of Glasgow safe has never been an easy task. From the pre-war razor gangs through to the drug lords of recent times, the city streets have never been free from peril. But without the men who relentlessly fought crime year after year, the citizens of Glasgow would have been in far greater danger. The Real Taggarts examines the lives of Glasgow's post-war crimebusters and is based on exhaustive research which has uncovered new and previously unpublished material, including the personal papers of key police officers which have never before been in the public domain. Many of these officers became legends in the Force: Joe Beattie, who worked on the Bible John investigation; Tom Goodall, Glasgow's Maigret, who battled against an unprecedented rise in violent crime in the city; Gilbert McIlwrick, the 'Quiet Man of the Force', who had to deal with five murders and a huge bank robbery in a single week. The Real Taggarts is a fascinating insight into the men whose job it was to keep Glasgow safe and the remarkable contribution they made, much of which has never before been revealed.

Many people believe that racism and discrimination against those of African descent was primarily an American experience. However, this book dispels that myth by recounting Leonard Albert Paris’s first eighteen years (1948–1966), growing up as a Black youth in rural Nova Scotia, Canada, a province that was at the time, home to about 36 percent of Canada’s Black population. Structural racism, community isolation, and generational poverty affected every aspect of his life, creating challenges and misery for him, his family, and the entire Black community—an experience that continues to affect him emotionally many decades later. While not as extreme as it was during the author’s formative years, racism and its effects continue into the present. Leonard wrote Jim Crow Also Lived Here in part to create awareness of this problem and also to inspire change.

The Davie McCall saga returns in Devil's Knock. Davie McCall has darkness inside him. A darkness that haunts him, but also helps him do despicable things to those trying to cause him and his friends harm. When Dickie Himes is killed in a club owned by the Jarvis clan, it sparks a chain of events that Davie knows can only lead to widespread gang war on the streets of mid- 90s Glasgow. The police are falling over themselves to solve the crime, but when justice is so easily bought or corrupted, Davie needs to take matters into his own hands. Davie has to contend with the ghosts of those he has failed, a persistent Hollywood actor and a scruffy dog with no name. When he finds a target on his back, will Davie be able to suppress the darkness inside him and refuse to kill... Or will the devil s knock be too tempting?

They'll all be crow bait by the time I'm finished...Jail was hell for Davie McCall. Ten years down the line, freedom's no picnic either. It's 1990, there are new kings in the West of Scotland underworld, and Glasgow is awash with drugs. Davie can handle himself. What he can't handle is the memory of his mother's death at the hand of his sadistic father. Or the darkness his father implanted deep in his own psyche. Or the nightmares...Now his father is back in town and after blood, ready to waste anyone who stops him hacking out a piece of the action. There are people in his way. And Davie is one of them. Tense, dark and nerve-wracking... a highly effective thriller. THE HERALD This is crime fiction of the strongest quality. CRIMESQUAD.COM A gory and razor-sharp crime novel from the start, Douglas Skelton's Crow Bait moves at breakneck speed like a getaway car on the dark streets of Glasgow. THE SKINNY Skelton has been hiding from his talent for long enough. High time he shared it with the rest of us. QUINTIN JARDINE PRAISE for Blood City The city's dark underbelly complete with knives, razors, guns and gangs... DAILY MAIL You follow the plot like an eager dog, nose turning this way and that, not catching every single clue but quivering as you lunge towards a blood-splattered denouement. DAILY EXPRESS The Glasgow of this period is a great, gritty setting for a crime story, and Skelton's non-fiction work stands him in good stead... he's taken well to fiction... the unexpected twists keep coming. THE HERALD

Davie McCall is tired. Tired of violence, tired of the Life. He's always managed to stay detached from the brutal nature of his line of work, but recently he has caught himself enjoying it. In the final instalment in the Davie McCall series old friends clash and long buried secrets are unearthed as McCall investigates a brutal five-year-old crime. Davie wants out, but the underbelly of Glasgow is all he has ever known. Will what he learns about his old ally Big Rab McClymont be enough to get him out of the Life? And could the mysterious woman who just moved in upstairs be just what he needs?