In the game for your life, do you feel lucky? Every man, woman and child in Pinewood Bay receives a unique number and a message telling them they’ve been entered into a death lottery. The entire community tunes into a website live streaming broadcast every night at eight. Before picking a number, the anonymous host asks the same question each night: “In the game for your life, do you feel lucky?” A number is announced and the town’s people helplessly watch as someone in Pinewood Bay is murdered. In a race against time, can Sheriff Noah Sharf find a serial killer before someone close to him wins the death lottery? All Pinewood Bay mysteries may be read in any order.

A seemingly ordinary village participates in a yearly lottery to determine a sacrificial victim.

The true crime story of murdered Florida lottery winner Abraham Shakespeare. Poor man. Rich man. Dead man. It sounded like a fairy tale: A homeless man named Abraham Shakespeare spent his last dollars on a Florida State lottery ticket—and miraculously won $31 million. Unprepared for his new found fortune, Abraham hired Dorice “Dee Dee” Moore to help manage his winnings and field the numerous requests for loans and assistance that he received. But somehow, Dee Dee was the only one benefiting. When Abraham quietly disappeared from his home in Florida, friends and family grew suspicious—though he could not read or write, his only form of contact was through odd letters and texts. But it wasn’t until investigators began to question Dee Dee about her role in Abraham’s finances that a complicated web of lies—and the desperate lengths to which one woman would go to cover it up—was exposed…

Every student at Saskatoon Collegiate knew that all the most important aspects of school life were controlled by a secret club called Shadow Council. Each fall, Shadow held a traditional lottery during which a single student's name was drawn. The rest of the student body called the student the lottery winner. But Shadow Council knew better; to them, the winner was the lottery victim. Whatever the label, the fated student became the Council's gofer, delivering messages of doom to selected targets. In response, the student body shunned the lottery winner for the entire year. This year's victim was fifteen-year-old Sally Hanson.

Mary Higgins Clark, the bestselling “Queen of Suspense,” returns with Alvirah Meehan—one of her most beloved characters—in these six dazzling, intertwined, and thrilling tales of sleuthing and suspense. Together with her devoted mate, the ever-resourceful Alvirah has jumped into crime solving on a grand scale—and with her indomitable spirit and style. Among their many adventures, Alvirah and Willy find a dead actress in their Central Park South condominium upon their return from London in “The Body in the Closet.” Needing a break from the big city, they escape to Cape Cod—only to meet a would-be heiress framed for murder in “Death on the Cape.” When Alvirah and Willy seek the tranquility of the Cypress Point Spa, it’s the perfect getaway—until a jewel thief turns up in “The Lottery Winner.” Back in Manhattan, the search for a neighbor’s missing newborn makes for a suspense-filled Christmas in “Bye, Baby Bunting.” The perfect collection for both Mary Higgins Clark and mystery fans, the stories in The Lottery Winner will keep you on the edge of your seat and leave you breathless!

A young victim of child abuse gradually overcomes his fears and suspicions when placed in a home with other boys.

"In 1994, historian Stephen Stigler placed a mail-order purchase for a rare bit of ephemera from a French bookstore: a lottery Almanac from 1834. It contained the winning numbers for the entire span of the French Loterie from 1758 onward, including details on prizes actually awarded-difficult data to come by-as well as hand-written notes by an early owner. Stigler was fascinated with what he saw about how the Loterie was carried out, who bought tickets, and what size bets they placed, and so in the decades that followed he amassed booklets, legal documents, advertising bills, notices, contracts, and tickets. His own collection and extensive additional research helped him piece together the Loterie's remarkable inner workings, as well as its implications for how we understand the history of risk more broadly. In the 1750s at the urging of famed philandering adventurer Giocomo Casanova (who had recently escaped from a Venetian prison by means of a sharpened iron, an accomplice, a rope of bed sheets, and a stolen gondola), the French state began to embrace risk in its approach to the Loterie. The prize amounts varied depending on the number of tickets bought, and the amount of the bet was determined by each individual bettor. The state could lose money on any individual lot but was statistically guaranteed it would come out on top in the long run. Stigler follows the Loterie from its curious inception to a 1776 expansion, to its interruption during the French Revolution (but only with the Terror of 1793), to its renewal in 1797 and further expansion, and finally to its suppression in 1836, examining throughout the wider question of how members of the public came to trust in new financial technologies and believe in their value"--