"Beeda is leading a double life. A single mother in Cape Town, she is a pious Muslim and a respected member of society. But she is also an independent-minded woman with a sizzling sensuality and a love for risk. When her friend introduces her to the local casino, Beeda tries out the slot machines and gets hooked. At first, the gambling is innocent enough, but soon life gets more and more complicated - her youngest son is dying from AIDS, her sister is diagnosed with cancer, and Beeda is consumed with an untenable love for someone she cannot have - and gambling starts to overtake her life." "Her neighbors disapprove of her habit and her son's illness; the entire Muslim culture frowns on her. But Beeda challenges the prejudices of her culture, and with self-assurance and humor she maps out a new path of redemption." "From the very picture of Muslim womanhood to a portrait of a woman troubled by the confines of unforgiving reality, Beeda's internal conflict parallels her society's conflict between modernity and tradition. A portrait of contemporary Muslim life in one of the world's most dynamic and dangerous cities, Confessions of a Gambler is a story both timely and universal - a story that shows that when a woman strays from the narrow path laid out for her by society, all bets are off."--BOOK JACKET.

A gripping, true story of one man’s forty-year struggle with compulsive gambling and his hard-won recovery. "My history of gambling really began before I was born." So opens Born to Lose, Bill Lee's self-told story of gambling addiction, set in San Francisco's Chinatown and steeped in a culture where it is not unheard of for gamblers (Lee's grandfather included) to lose their children to a bet. From wagering away his beloved baseball card collection as a youngster to forfeiting everything he owned at black jack tables in Las Vegas, Lee describes what gambling addiction feels like from the inside and how recovery is possible through the Twelve Step program.

A literature professor in the Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison describes her downward spiral into gambling addiction and despair.

This is the true story, as told to the doctor who looked after him just before he died, of the life of one of the last traditional yakuza in Japan. It wasn’t a "good" life, in either sense of the word, but it was an adventurous one; and the tale he has to tell presents an honest and oddly attractive picture of an insider in that separate, unofficial world. In his low, hoarse voice, he describes the random events that led the son of a prosperous country shopkeeper to become a member, and ultimately the leader, of a gang organizing illegal dice games in Tokyo's liveliest entertainment area. He talks about his first police raid, and the brutal interrogation and imprisonment that followed it. He remembers his first love affair, and the girl he ran away with, and the weeks they spent wandering about the countryside together. Briefly, and matter-of-factly, he describes how he cut off the little finger of his left hand as a ritual gesture of apology. He explains how the games were run and the profits spent; why the ties between members of "the brotherhood" were so important; and how he came to kill a man who worked for him. What emerges is a contradictory personality: tough but not unsentimental; stubborn yet willing to take life more or less as it comes; impulsive but careful to observe the rules of the business he had joined. And in the end, when his tale is finished, you feel you would probably have liked him if you'd met him in person. Fortunately, Dr. Saga's record of his long conversations with him provides a wonderful substitute for that meeting.

Take a behind-the-scenes no-holds-barred tour of your neighbourhood strip club. These adventures -- both high and low -- in the topless trade are culled from author Lacey Lane's seven years as an exotic dancer. This book takes you on an outlandish journey, from Lane's self-esteem issues, which provided the impetus for her entry into the skin biz, to the mysterious VIP Room, where anything and everything can happen. It's a parade through the screwy world of the strip club, where freaks, fetishists, scammers, high rollers, perverts, and even normal guys all congregate to partake in prurient fantasies of the flesh. Lane also provides a plethora of helpful hints for men -- and women -- who routinely frequent strip clubs, from tipping the bouncers and not getting suckered by roses and champagne to negotiating for services and yes, taking home a dancer.

Juxtaposing the thuggish worlds of bookies and privileged ivy leaguers, this hilarious study of unfettered machismo takes a perceptive look into a young, donw-on-his-luck Harvard graducate who joins a bookmaking operations while he tries to pull his life together.