Books by Alan Clarke

Jack Baker is a self-employed painter and decorator in his late twenties who also does occasional small plumbing jobs. Abandoned by his mother at birth, Jack was brought up by foster parents.When working in a large country house, he comes across a sports trophy engraved with a name that re-ignites a deep-held desire to try to find his birth family, something he failed to achieve in an earlier attempt.Using a different approach this time, he makes contact with a half-brother. Unknown to Jack, his relative has a shady past involving convictions for minor crimes, which inadvertently draw in Jack. The connection with his half sibling leads to a complicated series of events involving a corrupt Member of Parliament and his equally corrupt nephew.The police use Jack to further their investigations into the MP and his nephew. It turns out that both men’s crimes are far more serious than originally thought. Russian spies are only part of his troubles as Jack becomes involved in a complicated series of events that threaten his life.About the Author: Born in London, Alan Clarke has lived throughout the UK. The retired technical writer currently resides in West Cumbria in the Lake District of England. He was inspired to write this story by a friend who has been searching for his birth relatives for many years. This is his eighth novel.

The different stages of a festival's evolution provide a plethora of opportunities for us to better understand our culture, the relationships we build, what we value in our culture and our communities, and how we socialize and interact with one another.

Provides an international perspective on the hospitality and tourism industries and offers an insight into hospitality and tourism management. The book develops a critical view of the management theory and the traditional theories, looking at how appropriate they are in hospitality and tourism and in a multicultural context.

Anyone working with disadvantaged children and those with learning disabilities will be interested in Human Resilience's practical implications: how resilience can be improved both by personal characteristics such as self-esteem, problem-solving ability or sociability, interacting with external support.

The book challenges the widely held assumption that early experience has a disproportionate effect on later development. Drawing from over forty years of research, the authors argue the effects of early experiences are just the first steps in an ongoing, complex life path, on which the shaping, re-shaping of development can occur in any period.

This book provides students and practitioners with a comprehensive introduction to evaluation research. The author illustrates the contribution both quantitative and qualitative methods can make to evaluation, and stresses the important part played by theory in the evaluation enterprise.