"What are the odds against winning the Lotto, The Weakest Link, or Who Wants to be a Millionaire? The answer lies in the science of probability, yet many of us are unaware of how this science works. Every day, people make judgements on a wide variety of situations where chance plays a role, including buying insurance, betting on horse-racing, following medical advice - even carrying an umbrella. In Taking Chances, John Haigh guides the reader round common pitfalls, demonstrates how to make better-informed decisions, and shows where the odds can be unexpectedly in your favour. This new edition has been fully updated, and includes information on top television shows, plus a new chapter on Probability for Lawyers."--BOOK JACKET.

During the summer she spends with a married cousin, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a small town preacher not only discovers secrets which divide her family, but experiences, for the first time, uncertainties about her life.

"Contains... all the goodies that make today’s bestsellers." – New York Post In the internationally bestselling first book of the iconic Lucky Santangelo series, smart, sexy and savvy Lucky Santangelo finds running her family’s criminal empire exhilarating. She will do whatever it takes to ensure her self-made mob boss father, Gino, doesn’t return from his self-imposed exile. But of course, Gino has other plans. Lucky tries to enlist the help of Costa Zennocotti, her father’s right-hand man but quickly learns his loyalty lies only with Gino. . . at least for now. As Lucky impressively plots to keep control, suspense builds through a series of interwoven stories, past and present, that create a rich tantalizing tapestry of intrigue involving an unforgettable cast of characters. There’s Lucky’s younger brother, Dario, who’s being terrorized by his manipulative male lover. There’s Steven Berkely, the charismatic lawyer Lucky gets trapped with in an elevator during the New York City blackout of 1977. And then there’s Steven’s mother, Carrie, the elegant society wife, who’s being blackmailed to keep the shocking events of her past concealed—and by an adversary that may hit too close to home. As secrets old and new are revealed, Jackie Collins’s masterful storytelling sweeps readers from the height of the family’s power in the 1970s, to the streets of 1920s New York City, where the crime enterprise first originated, from the playgrounds of Europe to the glittering gambling palaces of Las Vegas, in a steamy, sensual, page-turning epic saga that builds to a stunning climax and leaves you yearning for more. Adapted in the 90s into a highly successful NBC mini-series, the Santangelo novels are currently being developed for TV once again by Working Title Productions and the updated series is set to be compulsive, sexy and totally binge-worthy! hr "Chances should be called The Godfather goes to bed.” – CNN "Chances starts out with a bang – and never lets up for over 600 sex-packed pages." – Variety hr Read the whole Lucky Santangelo series! 1. Chances 2. Lucky 3. Lady Boss 4. Vendetta: Lucky's Revenge 5. Dangerous Kiss 6. Drop Dead Beautiful 7. Poor Little Bitch Girl 8. Goddess of Vengeance 9. Confessions of a Wild Child - Lucky: The Early Years 10. The Santangelos 11. A Santangelo Story hr

Winner, 2023 William James Book Award, American Psychological Association Division 1 in General Psychology Most of us, no matter how rational we think we are, have a lucky charm, a good-luck ritual, or some other custom we follow in the hope that it will lead to a good result. Is the idea of luckiness just a way in which we try to impose order on chaos? Do we live in a world of flukes and coincidences, good and bad breaks, with outcomes as random as a roll of the dice—or can our beliefs help change our luck? What Are the Chances? reveals how psychology and neuroscience explain the significance of the idea of luck. Barbara Blatchley explores how people react to random events in a range of circumstances, examining the evidence that the belief in luck helps us cope with a lack of control. She tells the stories of lucky and unlucky people—who won the lottery multiple times, survived seven brushes with death, or found an apparently cursed Neanderthal mummy—as well as the accidental discoveries that fundamentally changed what we know about the brain. Blatchley considers our frequent misunderstanding of randomness, the history of luckiness in different cultures and religions, the surprising benefits of magical thinking, and many other topics. Offering a new view of how the brain handles the unexpected, What Are the Chances? shows why an arguably irrational belief can—fingers crossed—help us as we struggle with an unpredictable world.

Her first year away is turning out to be near perfect, but one weekend of giving in to heated passion will change everything. Eighteen year old Harper has grown up under her career-Marine father’s thumb. Ready to live life her own way and experience things she’s only ever heard of from the jarheads in her father’s unit, she’s on her way to college at San Diego State University. She finds herself being torn in two as she quickly falls in love with Brandon, who becomes her boyfriend—and her roommate’s brother Chase. Covered in tattoos, known for fighting in the Underground and ridiculously muscled...they’re exactly what she was always warned to stay away from, but just what she needs.

“[Russo’s] first novel in ten years hits the ball out of the park. . . . You’ll lap up this gripping, wise, and wonderful summer treat.” —The Boston Globe “A cascade of charm. . . . Russo is an undeniably endearing writer, and chances are this story will draw you back to the most consequential moments in your own life.”—The Washington Post One beautiful September day, three men in their late sixties convene on Martha's Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college in the sixties. They couldn't have been more different then, or even today—Lincoln's a commercial real estate broker, Teddy a tiny-press publisher, and Mickey is a musician beyond his rockin' age. But each man holds his own secrets, in addition to the monumental mystery that none of them has ever stopped puzzling over since a Memorial Day weekend right here on the Vineyard in 1971. Now, forty-five years later, three lives and that of a significant other are put on displaywhile the distant past confounds the present ina relentless squall of surprise and discovery. Shot through with Russo's trademark comedy and humanity, Chances Are . . . introduces a new level of suspense and menace that will quicken the reader's heartbeat throughout this absorbing saga.

Seventeen-year-old Rose Levenson has a decision to make: Does she want to know how she's going to die? Because when Rose turns eighteen, she can take the test that tells her if she carries the genetic mutation for Huntington's disease, the degenerative condition that is slowly killing her mother. With a fifty-fifty shot at inheriting her family's genetic curse, Rose is skeptical about pursuing anything that presumes she'll live to be a healthy adult-including her dream career in ballet and the possibility of falling in love. But when she meets a boy from a similarly flawed genetic pool and gets an audition for a dance scholarship across the country, Rose begins to question her carefully laid rules.