Nothing can prepare you for what happens in Vegas...When I met Rafe Morelli, he didn't look like the biggest mistake I'd ever make; he seemed closer to the crime family version of Prince Charming. Charismatic, beautiful, and attentive--with an intoxicating air of power--Rafe was the stuff of my darkest fantasies. What we had should have been a simple fling, no-strings-attached. My hot weekend with the sexy, dominant Vegas boss--a harmless memory to replay once I returned to my quiet, predictable life. One tiny hitch in that plan: a panty-melting memory isn't all he left behind. Now the stakes have changed, and I'm faced with a potentially life-altering decision. Do I stay away and enjoy my status as the only woman in known history who has played in the Morelli flames without getting burned, or do I risk everything and step back into the fire?BOOK 1 OF 3 IN THE VEGAS MORELLI TRILOGYTakes place AFTER the original Morelli family series. You can read this trilogy without reading the original series, but there will be some original series spoilers, and two of the main characters from this trilogy were originally introduced as side characters in the original Morelli family series. Like the original Morelli series, this trilogy is a continuing story involving the same characters, not three separate-couple standalones.

The greatest threat to privacy today is not the NSA, but good-old American companies. Internet giants, leading retailers, and other firms are voraciously gathering data with little oversight from anyone. In Las Vegas, no company knows the value of data better than Caesars Entertainment. Many thousands of enthusiastic clients pour through the ever-open doors of their casinos. The secret to the company's success lies in their one unrivaled asset: they know their clients intimately by tracking the activities of the overwhelming majority of gamblers. They know exactly what games they like to play, what foods they enjoy for breakfast, when they prefer to visit, who their favorite hostess might be, and exactly how to keep them coming back for more. Caesars' dogged data-gathering methods have been so successful that they have grown to become the world's largest casino operator, and have inspired companies of all kinds to ramp up their own data mining in the hopes of boosting their targeted marketing efforts. Some do this themselves. Some rely on data brokers. Others clearly enter a moral gray zone that should make American consumers deeply uncomfortable. We live in an age when our personal information is harvested and aggregated whether we like it or not. And it is growing ever more difficult for those businesses that choose not to engage in more intrusive data gathering to compete with those that do. Tanner's timely warning resounds: Yes, there are many benefits to the free flow of all this data, but there is a dark, unregulated, and destructive netherworld as well.

Sometimes what happens in Vegas doesn't stay there. Callyn Stott wakes up from a night-out at her friend Lara's Bachelorette party in Vegas with a hangover... and a wife. She's not really sure how she and her best friend Emma got hitched, only that they did and it's completely and totally legal. Callyn is used to getting in and out of scrapes, but this one takes the cake. Further complicating matters, Emma suggest that they stay married for "financial reasons" that don't really hold water. Not wanting to argue, Callyn agrees. The situation gets even more confusing when Callyn has to move out of her apartment, and where is she going to stay? With her fake wife, and best friend, of course. It's not like anything is going to happen. Things between the two of them have always been strictly platonic and best-friendy, right? Emma hasn't been secretly in love with Callyn her whole life and has just been waiting for Callyn to notice. No, surely not. Will Callyn get her head out of her ass and see what's right in front of her, or will she live the rest of her life oblivious that the one person she's always wanted is already there?

A savage journey into the heart of Hunter S. Thompson's Las Vegas with the Good Doctor as tour guide. A Lord-of-the-Rings-like adventure in the city's underground flood channels. A seven-day stay at a seedy motel on East Fremont Street. The stories in My Week at the Blue Angel aren't about Steve Wynn, Cirque du Soleil, or how to play poker, and they aren't set in Caesars Palace, XS Nightclub, or a 2,000-seat showroom. They're about prostitutes, ex-cons, and the homeless, and they're set under Caesars Palace and in trailer parks and weekly motels. In this creative nonfiction collection, Matthew O'Brien--author of Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas--and veteran photographer Bill Hughes show a side of the city rarely seen. A side beyond the neon lights, themed facades, and motel-room doors. A side beyond the barbwire fences, No Trespassing signs, and midnight shadows.

Yet I believe that it does not matter where we come from; it only matters where we are headed and whether we have a clear eye along the way no matter what adventure or misadventure we face. In the end, we will always prevail with love, determination, and goodwill to others no matter the odds.

As part of the notorious MIT Team depicted in Ben Mezrich's now classic Bringing Down the House, Jeff Ma used math and statistics to master the game of blackjack and reap handsome rewards at casinos. Years later, Ma has inspired not only a bestselling novel and hit movie, but has also started three different companies—the latest of which, Citizen Sports, is an innovative marriage of sports, betting, and digital technology—and launched a successful corporate speaking career. The House Advantage reveals Ma's cutting-edge mathematical insights into the world of statistics and makes them applicable to a wide business audience. He argues that numbers are the key to analyzing nearly everything in the world of business, from how to spot and profit from global market inefficiencies to having multiple backup plans in anticipation of every probability. Ma's stories and business lessons are as intriguing as they are universally applicable.