This “brutal and unflinching” novel of fleeting love in Sin City inspired the film starring Nicholas Cage and Elizabeth Shue (Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City). John O’Brien’s debut novel, Leaving Las Vegas, is an emotionally wrenching story of a woman who embraces life and a man who rejects it; a powerful tale of hard luck, hard drinking, and a relationship of tenderness and destruction. An avowed alcoholic, Ben drinks away his family, friends, and, finally, his job. With deliberate resolve, he burns the remnants of his life and heads for Las Vegas to end it all in the last great binge of his hopeless life. On the Strip, he picks up Sera, a prostitute, in what might have become another excess in his self-destructive jag. Instead, their chance meeting becomes a respite on the road to oblivion as they form a bond that is as mysterious as it is immutable.

This is a reissue of the novel inspired by Hunter S. Thompson's ether-fuelled, savage journey to the heart of the American Dream: We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold... And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas.

This is a book of jazzy, edgy, adventuresome poems from the author of Earthquake Weather and Like Cities, Like Storms. Ever aware, ever vivid, ever focused, Kleinzahler's are some of the finest lyrics being produced in American poetry today. "Pieces of ordinary talk are Kleinzahler's strong suit," as Helen Vendler observed in Parnassus, "because they occur in his glancing, alert rhythms. . . . [His] jaunty skips and riffs solace the ear." Red Sauce, Whiskey and Snow presents an experimental poetry of exceptional wit and control.

1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In Green Sees Things in Waves, a powerful and inventive collection, August Kleinzahler succeeds in creating a new idiom for American lyric poetry that captures the velocity and swerves of contemporary life in the city. He pushes the language very hard to get there, and the results are breathtaking: an angular, propulsive poetry that transforms character, voice, and setting into buzzing, luminous events.

Join Ed Deline, president of operations for the Montecito Resort & Casino, and his protégé, Danny McCoy, a former U.S. Marine and Las Vegas native, as they deal with card-counting cheaters, costly streaks of random luck, and rival casinos stealing their big-money players in the town deservedly known as Sin City.... Making sure a multimillion-dollar operation like the Montecito runs smoothly is a challenge on a good day. When the casino is overrun by a Western trade show called Stampede!, that job gets even tougher. Complicating matters is an imminent visit by a German business magnate, who will be making a televised speech from the Montecito that could have far-reaching political and economic ramifications. So while Mike Cannon is tapped to investigate the theft of some very...precious...merchandise from the Stampede! floor, Ed and Danny have their hands full coordinating safety measures with the German's private security force and the Secret Service. And when Danny uncovers the blueprint for what appears to be an assassination plan, the Montecito team must race to prevent a lethal incident of international proportions.

Launched by the summer '04 award-winning bestseller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. In this chilling portrait of America's Sin City, lady luck is just as likely to dispense cold hard cash as a cold-hearted killing. Brand-new stories by: John O'Brien, David Corbett, Scott Phillips, Nora Pierce, Bliss Esposito, Felicia Campbell, Jaq Greenspon, Jos Skinner, Pablo Medina, Christine McKellar, Lori Kozlowski, Vu Tran, Celeste Starr, Preston L. Allen, Tod Goldberg, and Janet Berliner. Las Vegas provides the classic sophistication and darkness necessary for a deadly noir story. Stylish, sultry, brimming with ambition and greed, the characters that populate this literary Las Vegas are pushed to the extremes of human experience. From the neon glitter of the Strip to the treacherous views of Red Rock Canyon and Boulder City, from the desperation of Naked City to the racial tensions of the Westside, no other location offers so many different avenues leading to serious trouble. Many legendary authors have turned their attention to Vegas to investigate the city's moods and mysteries. Now, the most recent crop of acclaimed writers explore the secret neighborhoods and byways of America's most sinful city, offering readers not only compelling noir tales but also an insider's understanding of this steamy oasis. These authors take readers beneath the surface flash of Freemont Street and the Strip and into the gritty multicultural environs of underground Vegas. Jarret Keene is author/editor of three books, including the poetry collection Monster Fashion, the alt-travel tome The Underground Guide to Las Vegas, and the unauthorized rock bio The Killers: Destiny Is Calling Me. He lives in Las Vegas. Todd James Pierce is the author of three books, including the novel A Woman of Stone and the short story collection Newsworld, which won the 2006 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. He is an assistant professor of English at Cal Poly University in San Luis Obispo, California.

Blackmail. Bombs. Hit teams and executions. Skimming of casino profits. Illegal sports gaming. These tactics were "business as usual" for members of the mafia in the United States in the 1970s. But a team of F.B.I. agents and Kansas City Police Department detectives decided, in those corrupt days, to take advantage of new court-ordered wiretap privileges to curtail some of the graft in that city. The result of those efforts was the end of the mob's domination of Las Vegas casino operations, the imprisonment of key players and the decimation of the mafia's influence in Kansas City, Chicago, Milwaukee and Las Vegas. An ex-cop from Kansas City was part of the team that tackled the mafia corruption. He compiled this account of the surveillance efforts by including verbatim wiretap transcripts that tell the story of those days in the words of the mob's key operatives themselves. Leaving Vegas takes you behind the scenes, detailing the drama from the point of view of the surveillance teams listening in on the conversations, as well as providing the flavor of the relationships between the mobsters. Prison sentences and an end to the bulk of the mob violence in Kansas City wrote a "happy" ending to this story. Jenkins provides plenty of context to this milestone investigation, as well as photos of the key players and surveillance locations.