This is a wonderfully colourful and deeply poignant memoir of growing up in a 'single end' - one room in a Glasgow tenement - during and immediately after the Second World War. Although young Robert Douglas's life was blighted by the cruel if sporadic presence of his father, it was equally blessed by the love of his mother, Janet. While the story of their life together is in some ways very sad, it is also filled with humorous and happy memories. "Night Song of The Last Tram" is a superb ev...

We left Robert a long way from home, a sixteen-year-old recruit in the RAF. Now, we follow his escape from the Forces (until National Service a few years later!), his return to Glasgow and life down the pit. Once more, Robert's fantastic memory for people, places and anecdotes, combined with an ear for individual voices and the brilliant ability to evoke a bygone sense of community, will enchant his readers and sometimes appal them with the brutality of conditions he experienced.

Boies Penrose: Symbol of an Era by Robert Douglas Bowden In the smoke-filled back rooms of American politics, where deals were struck in whispers and power was the only currency that mattered, one man stood above the rest as the undisputed master of a brutal and magnificent game. Boies Penrose, the towering Republican boss of Pennsylvania, wielded influence so vast and so unapologetic that his very name became synonymous with the Gilded Age machine politics that shaped a nation. This gripp...

The multiple award-winning Restaurant Manager’s Handbook is the best-selling book on running a successful food service operation. Now in the 4th completely revised edition, nine new chapters detail restaurant layout, new equipment, and principles for creating a successful business.

Gotham Express magazine founder and editor Jonathan Daly had it all. Talent, money, fame, charm, good looks, and success. But he also had a huge ego, tremendous arrogance, a volcanic temper, and the ability to alienate even those closest to him. So there is no shortage of suspects when Jonathan is brutally murdered. And no shortage of danger when Jonathan's estranged spouse and widow, Ellen Foley, is threatened with the same fate.It's up to former Gotham Express star investigative ...

Glasgow, 1971. The old way of life is under threat for the tight-knit community in Dalbeattie Street, Maryhill. The shadow of the wrecker's ball looms large over their homes, and they must face the choice of moving to a new estate or dispersing throughout the city. But powerful friendships refuse to be broken. These characters have gone through too much together to be destroyed by some measly planning scheme. They'll face this with the same inimitable Scottish humour and strength of spirit...

In the final instalment in his autobiographical trilogy, Robert Douglas takes us through the sixties and into the eighties with his memories of life as a prison officer, and, at the end of his career, as an electricity chargehand driving around the Yorkshire Dales. He tells us of his prison experiences, with anecdotes about many of the most famous criminals in British history -- the Krays, the Richardsons, the Great Train Robbers, Soviet spies and many more. Told in the same endearing and ...

Nightmares can’t really hurt you… can they?An evil from beyond the stars haunts a young boy and his father at Roswell Airbase. The survivors of a sunken warship take refuge on a deserted island, and discover they are not alone. And terror checks in at an old motel, when a vacationing family finds themselves trapped in an ancient curse…Scare Street journeys into the night to bring you a new volume of skin-crawling terror. This macabre collection con...

A major new biography that takes an unusual and illuminating approach to the great writer—immersing us in one year of his life—from the award-winning author of Becoming Dickens and The Story of Alice.The year is 1851. It's a time of radical change in Britain, when industrial miracles and artistic innovations rub shoulders with political unrest, poverty, and disease. It is also a turbulent year in the private life of Charles Dickens, as he copes wi...

An examination of the lives of author Lewis Carroll & Alice Liddell and the creation of the "Alice" stories & their ongoing popularity.Following his acclaimed life of Dickens, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst illuminates the tangled history of two lives and two books. Drawing on numerous unpublished sources, he examines in detail the peculiar friendship between the Oxford mathematician Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and Alice Liddell, the child for whom he invented the Ali...

This is an utterly charming story about twelve families and their tightly knit street in 1950s Maryhill. Following the end of the war, the close rebuilds its ties and the strong sense of community and friendly neighbourhood bonds are soon back in place. There is young love for Rhea and Robert; a surprising new start for James; a change of direction for George; and all overseen by the matriarch of the street - Granny Thomson. And of course, all buoyed up by a big helping of Scottish humour ...

The dark side is waiting…Fish N’ Chips lead a curious traveler to a sinister island, where the residents are more than they seem. Forbidden occult knowledge strands a pair of friends in a terrifying nexus of evil. And an ancient ice storm forces a wandering tribe to choose between following a bloodthirsty shaman, or the glowing lights in the sky…Venture into new realms of terror with Scare Street’s latest bone-chilling collection. This spine-tingli...