Needles and Skins a novel by Sam Stilton, is set predominantly in the Gorbals of Glasgow, Scotland, it is based throughout on the true stories of those happy and not so happy souls who populated the less salubrious Govan, Maryhill and Gorbals - the urban hinterlands of Scotland's darker side. Like Glasgow itself, Needles and Skins doesn't pull any punches. The reader is drawn into a squalid den of defilement, humiliation and misery. The reader is absorbed into a way of life best looked at through bullet-proof glass. It relates to the difficulties encountered by good families born into the wrong communities. It is a social trap from which few escape, it is where human nature is at its most raw but unforgiving. However, throughout it all shines a light of hope and fulfilment. It is a no holds barred grim trail that leaves the reader aching from the nightmare vision of murder, gang rape, drug abuse, paedophilia, casual violence and theft. The theft of every last vestige of human dignity.