On Glasgow's meanest streets life started well for the young Paul Ferris. How did he become Glasgow's most feared gangster, deemed a risk to national security? Arthur Thompson, Godfather of the crime world and senior partner of the Krays, recruited young Ferris as a bagman, debt collector and equaliser. Feared for his capacity for extreme violence, respected for his intelligence, Ferris was the Godfather's heir apparent. But when gang warfare broke, underworld leaders traded in flesh, colluding with their partners - the police. Disgusted, Ferris left the Godfather and stood alone. They gave him weeks to live. While Ferris was caged in Barlinnie Prison's segregation unit accused of murdering Thompson's son, Fatboy, his two friends were shot dead the night before the funeral and grotesquely displayed in a car on the cortége's route. Acquitted against all the odds, Ferris moved on, determined to make an honest living. They would not let him. The National Crime Squad, MI5, the police and two of the country's most powerful gangsters saw to that. A maximum-security prisoner, Ferris is known as 'Lucky' because he is still alive. This is one man's unique insight into Britain's crime world and the inextricable web of corruption - a revealing story of official corruption and unholy alliances.

The armed guards and Alsatians stayed put as the prison gates slammed shut. 'I'm going straight,' Paul Ferris announced to the press, then sped off in a waiting car. Before he'd reached the first corner, the journalists were after him. And they weren't the only ones . . . Paul Ferris ruled crime in Scotland. He had links to London firms, Manchester gangs and Liverpool faces. He'd been accused of murdering The Godfather's son, Fatboy, and found not guilty. Some cops talked of killing him. Now he was telling the world that he was walking away from his life of crime. But would they let him? Vendetta tells the astonishing inside story of what happened next to Paul Ferris. And it's a story of international gangsters, hit contracts, murders, bank scams, Essex-boy torturers, corrupt politics, crackhead hitmen, knife duels, terrorists and more. In Vendetta, Paul Ferris slashes open the underbelly of Britain's streets and exposes the dark forces that police them as well as revealing the truth about what really happened to him and about the conspiracies and corruption that won't leave him alone. For years, new enemies and old foes have tried to silence Paul Ferris. But it's Ferris who's here to tell the tale while many of them are not. And some tale it is.

This chilling and disturbing memoir tells the story of one of Glasgow's most notorious criminals. In his own words, William Lobban tells how he was born in Exeter Prison to a violent, schizophrenic mother. His upbringing in the East End of Glasgow was just as bleak, and he ended up in care, destined for a life of violence and insecurity. Aged only 15 he masterminded a daring break-in to a Glasgow pub, and many years of armed robberies, dealing class A drugs and gang fights followed. When he wasn't causing mayhem on the streets, Lobban was serving terms in various young offenders' institutions and prisons, where he was involved in some of the most serious prison riots of recent years. In the course of his criminal career Lobban became closely associated with the infamous Paul Ferris, who was later to incriminate him as the murderer of fellow gangster Arthur Thompson Jr. Police also believed that Lobban was the man behind the brutal double killing of Bobby Glover and Joe 'Bananas' Hanlon, but none of these charges was made to stick. Finally released from prison in 1998, Lobban decided to walk away from a life of crime, but at first it proved impossible for him to break the way of life that had moulded him, and only in recent years has he found a measure of peace and stability. In this searing expose of the Glasgow underworld he reveals the true facts behind those crimes which he really committed, and those of which he is falsely accused.

Paul Ferris was one of Britain's most feared gangsters for twenty-five years. Now, in Villains, Ferris reveals the real inside story of the villains he met and worked with, the common thugs and big-time players that surrounded him and the world of violence and fear he lived in every day of his life. In Glasgow, London and Manchester, Paul Ferris knew and worked with the biggest gangsters in the UK - everyone from Arthur Thompson in Glasgow to the Addams family in London and Rab Carruthers in Manchester. Villains is the story of the hard lives of hard men by someone who knows. There's jewel heists, crime families, new stories about Glasgow's Godfather, Arthur Thompson, a secret meeting with loyalist 'Mad Dog' Johnny Adair, the Glasgow hard man who loved bingo, and much more. And, when it comes to villains, it takes one to know one.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this big, brilliant, profoundly observed novel by National Book Award Finalist Joshua Ferris explores the absurdities of modern life and one man's search for meaning. Paul O'Rourke is a man made of contradictions: he loves the world, but doesn't know how to live in it. He's a Luddite addicted to his iPhone, a dentist with a nicotine habit, a rabid Red Sox fan devastated by their victories, and an atheist not quite willing to let go of God. Then someone begins to impersonate Paul online, and he watches in horror as a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account are created in his name. What begins as an outrageous violation of his privacy soon becomes something more soul-frightening: the possibility that the online "Paul" might be a better version of the real thing. As Paul's quest to learn why his identity has been stolen deepens, he is forced to confront his troubled past and his uncertain future in a life disturbingly split between the real and the virtual. At once laugh-out-loud funny about the absurdities of the modern world, and indelibly profound about the eternal questions of the meaning of life, love and truth, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is a deeply moving and constantly surprising tour de force.

Set against the tumultuous political backdrop of late ’60s Chicago, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is the fictional graphic diary of 10-year-old Karen Reyes, filled with B-movie horror and pulp monster magazines iconography. Karen Reyes tries to solve the murder of her enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor, while the interconnected stories of those around her unfold. When Karen’s investigation takes us back to Anka’s life in Nazi Germany, the reader discovers how the personal, the political, the past, and the present converge.

It used to be thought that no single person could rule the mean streets of Glasgow. Arthur Thompson proved this to be wrong. From an ordinary working-class family, Thompson started out as a bouncer and minder. Hard yet bright, he learned quickly. Cross him and you'd be scarred. Cheat him and he nailed you to the floor, crucifixionstyle. The gangsters of Glasgow thought it couldn't get any worse - it did. For forty years, Thompson ruled Glasgow and there came a time when his capacity for violence became so boundless that people would pray to be crucified. This fully revised edition of The Last Godfather visits places no law-abiding person has been. The gunrunning, murders, drug dealing and torture are all still there but there's much more - atrocities like how he improved on crucifixion as a means of revenge, how he created Europe's Tartan Mafia, how he invented concrete boots as a failsafe way of disposing of enemies' corpses. Then there are the ways he has had an impact on the lives and, more importantly, deaths of others - one man killed by a sniper, another kidnapped in London and tortured for days in Glasgow. Thompson died of natural causes but his influence didn't stop at his grave - which, incidentally, was deliberately left unmarked in case someone he'd had a run-in with decided to dig him up and wreak some kind of horrible revenge. This new edition includes previously unexplored aspects of Thompson's legacy and investigates the reasons there could never be another gang lord as all-powerful as Arthur Thompson - why he was destined to become The Last Godfather.

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year: The first collection of short stories from the critically acclaimed, prize-winning author of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour These eleven stories by Joshua Ferris, many of which were first published in The New Yorker, are at once thrilling, strange, and comic. The modern tribulations of marriage, ambition, and the fear of missing out as the temptations flow like wine and the minutes of life tick down are explored with the characteristic wit and insight that have made Ferris one of our most critically acclaimed novelists. Each of these stories burrows deep into the often awkward and hilarious misunderstandings that pass between strangers and lovers alike, and that turn ordinary lives upside down. Ferris shows to what lengths we mortals go to coax human meaning from our very modest time on earth, an effort that skews ever-more desperately in the direction of redemption. There's Arty Groys, the Florida retiree whose birthday celebration involves pizza, a prostitute, and a life-saving heart attack. There's Sarah, the Brooklynite whose shape-shifting existential dilemma is set in motion by a simple spring breeze. And there's Jack, a man so warped by past experience that he's incapable of having a normal social interaction with the man he hires to help him move out of storage. The stories in The Dinner Party are about lives changed forever when the reckless gives way to possibility and the ordinary cedes ground to mystery. And each one confirms Ferris's reputation as one of the most dazzlingly talented, deeply humane writers at work today.

Glasgow, 1989. James Addison, aka Addie, has been a very busy man. Wanted for every type of crime for over a decade, there is only one hitch - he has never been seen, let alone caught. So, who or what is Addie? Does he even exist? When a small-time moneylender pimp is shot down on a Glasgow street, it seems to be just another gangland murder. But not for Andy Grimes, overseer of much of the city's prostitution, drug dealing and protection rackets - and the dead man's brother. When word leaks out that Addie is the killer, Grimes calls in his police allies and musters his troops. On the case is DCI Alex Birse, and old-time cop, as crooked as he is vicious. He has been after Addie for years and never got close. As the streets of Glasgow heave with police and gangsters, over in Berlin the Wall is coming down. At this time of great change, opportunity and uncertainty, the two cities are linked by loot – Bearer Bonds to be precise. Back in Glasgow, while pulling a scam on an old Jewish couple, one of Grimes' men, Angie the Gopher, finds a biscuit tin full of Bearer Bonds issued in Germany before the Second World War. Angie smells money – the bonds could be worth millions – and he scuttles back to tell his boss. Now the chase is on. Who gets the bonds? How much are they worth? Who perishes along the way? For the answers you'll have to rely on Addie. But can they catch him? The last line will reveal all . . . maybe.

Examines how the engineer George Ferris invented and constructed the amusement park ride that bears his name for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.