The World Fantasy Award-winning author of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August presents a mesmerizing tale of a gambling house whose deadly games of chance and skill control the fate of empires.
Everyone has heard of the Gameshouse. But few know all its secrets. . .
It is the place where fortunes can be made and lost through chess, backgammon — every game under the sun.
But those whom fortune favors may be invited to compete...

The way twelve-year-old Ked Eakins of Norton, Maine, sees it his life has been stolen from him, piece by piece; first by kyphosis, a spinal abnormality which has made him a social outcast at school and a target for the school bully, by his friends who have recently abandoned him, by his mother who left for the West Coast taking the insurance which might have saved him with her, and by his father who is a gambling addict who has lost the rent money--but...

"Miss Venus Merriwell has been waiting for her prince to come since the tender age of fourteen. She wants a man who is a selfless academic like her, and free from all the wretched vices her gambler father enjoyed far too much before he left the Merriwell sisters practically destitute. Unfortunately, after a slew of romantic disappointments, there is still no sign of that prince at twenty-three and the only one true love of her life is the bursting-at-the-seams...

Determined to marry into a respectable family, gambler Lewton Paterson, sets his sights on Emily McMurray, one of the McMurray sisters. Unfortunately, Emily has no intention of ever getting married, especially to a man like Lewt.

A man who loves to place bets acquires a remarkable frog, which he claims can outjump any other frog in the county.

Natchez, Mississippi --Private Investigator Nate Price and his new wife, Isabelle, need a vacation. Their coworkers generously team up to surprise them with a belated honeymoon...but the happy trip turns sour when Izzy spies her ex-husband, who appears to have taken up his gambling addiction once again. While the boss is away, Price Investigations remains in the hands of Beth Kirby, a former police officer, and Michael Preston, a former forensic accountant....

"It's winter in Montreal, 2002, when a graphic design student's gambling addiction starts to drag him under. In debt to the metal band that's commissioned him to draw their album cover and ensnared in lies to his friends and his cousin, he takes the first job that promises a paycheck: dishwasher at La Trattoria, a high-end restaurant, where he finds himself thrust, on his first night, into roiling world of characters. A magnificent, hyperrealist debut,...

In Chicago, nineteen-year-old Tate Bertram is a compulsive gambler who masks his "tells" with great discipline, although underneath the controlled facade are deep insecurities that compel him to keep everyone, especially those closest to him at arm's length, but when Tate is given an unexpected opportunity to redeem himself and to conquer his addiction, he does so by playing one last hand.

Little Nell and her grandfather are left destitute when the evil Quilp seizes their Old Curiosity Shop in payment for their overdue debts.

Every year in North America, chronic compulsive gambling shatters the lives of millions. In this program, psychologists Claude Boutin and Robert Ladouceur talk with recovering gamblers who share their stories of exhilaration and despair as they rode the roller coaster to ruin-what it felt like to win and lose, to spend every dollar they had, to lie and steal in order to finance their addiction, to contemplate suicide, and, fortunately, to enter group...