Presents an illustrated history of gamblers and gambling in the Old West.

Britain's foremost writer on crime turns to the disappearance of Lord Lucan. The basis of the upcoming ITV drama, Lucan, starring Rory Kinnear and Christopher Eccleston For over thirty years, John Pearson has provided us with literary exposures of some of the most enigmatic people and underground organisations of our modern world. The Gamblers follows the fortunes of five men at the centre of the ultra-fashionable Clermont Set: the Clermont Club's eccentric founder John Aspinall; Dominic Elwes, who was to betray the Set's code of silence; the socialite owner of Annabel's, Mark Birley; the womanising, multi millionaire James Goldsmith; and the infamous Lord 'Lucky' Lucan. At the heart of the Set lay a belief that risk-takers are the people who make civilisation tick.Cruel, heartless and snobbish, they gambled with their fortunes and kept a stiff upper lip when they lost.This and a loyalty to each other that transcended everything else enabled them to rise above crises such as the long affair between Birley's wife and James Goldsmith, and the facial mutilation of the Birley's son by one of Aspinall's tigers.Pearson revels in the charisma, charm and wit of these dastardly but debonair millionaires, and reveals how their code led to one of the great unsolved mysteries of the twentieth century.

Dear Avon Books, Where are my heroes? Whenever I'm reading a book by one of my favorite authors I find I'm falling for the wrong guy -- not the hero, but the other man -- and what I really want is for him to have his own story. Like Jake Linley, from Someone to Watch Over Me by Lisa Kleypas…that doctor could sit by my bedside if I ever got sick. And Ned Blydon in Splendid by Julia Quinn...he makes me want to learn to waltz! I never thought living in a drafty castle would be much fun until Simon of Ravenswood in Master of Desire by Kinley MacGregor came along. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that these are my men -- when do they get their stories? Sincerely, A Romance Fan Some books are so special that there is more than one hero to love, but only a single story is told. So if you find yourself asking, "Where is my hero?" you'll discover the answer right here in this delicious collection by New York Times bestseller Lisa Kleypas, New York Times bestseller Julia Quinn and USA Today bestseller Kinley MacGregor.

Magic may be secret, but it’ll kill you anyway. Twenty-eight-year-old mayor’s assistant Elizabeth has enough on her plate grieving her father’s suicide. She doesn’t need his stash of magical knowledge in the attic. She doesn’t need the hidden supernatural subculture of monsters it pulls her into. And she certainly doesn’t need hints that her father’s madness might have been a smokescreen for something far darker. But uncovering her father’s secrets could be the only way Elizabeth can stop a string of suspicious suicides… if the local wizard doesn’t rip the memories out of her mind, first. Wizards, right?

"Oil," writes Ruth Sheldon Knowles, "is the most hazardous, expensive, heartbreaking gambling game in the world." And, as this book dramatically proves, the men who have been the gamblers of the American oil business have been some of the most colorful and fantastic personalities in our history. The Greatest Gamblers is the story of our remarkable oilmen and the vast industry they have created-from its simple beginnings in 1859 at Titusville, Pennsylvania, to the big-business oil operations of today. Here are the wildcatters, the prospectors, the scientists, the hunch players (Mrs. Knowles points out that independent oilmen have discovered more than three-fourths of America's oil fields). Here you will meet "unlucky" Dad Joiner, whose fortunes changed only in his seventies when a worthless ten-acre tract of Texas wasteland proved the key to one of America's two biggest oil fields; and H. 1. Hunt, who parlayed an oil lease he won at a poker game into an oil business that made him one of the richest men in the United States. Harry Sinclair ... Tom Slick … Mike Benedum … Everette DeGolyer … Charles Canfield … Edward Doheny — the pages of this book are crowded with the stories of such men, their tough boom towns, their dogged persistence and wild successes, and the brutal competition they faced. But The Greatest Gambler is also the story of a prospectors' rush that has become an organized industry. An absorbing portion of the book tells how the industry has found new uses for petroleum and its by products, and how this sometimes involved as much heartbreak as prospecting. There were the ships that exploded when oilmen first tried to market petroleum as marine fuel, the locomotive roundhouse that blew up when they first tried to convert railroads to oil. Mrs. Knowles discusses knowledgeably the present predicament of the petroleum industry and what is necessary to find and develop America's remaining great oil and gas resources. The Greatest Gamblers is a lively and authoritative account of what is probably the most fascinating and adventurous business of all.

Gambling is risky business, especially for recreational gamers. All casino poker rooms are populated 24/7 by serious players capable of emptying the pockets of any less experienced guests. While predators and crooks are a minority, they are there; these types seek out the uninitiated and rarely fail to deplete their bankrolls. Even a few dealers are out to make an easy buck, but the house and fellow players tend to keep that minority in line. Still, the poker room is a better bet than the house games, at which even professionals become losers over the long haul. All the author learned over thirty years of visiting casinos a couple of times a week is told in The Gamblers.