Otto Penzler and the Mystery Writers of America present Grandmaster by Warren Murphy and Molly Cochran, winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Paperback Original in 1985. Two men, born on the same day on opposite sides of the world, driven to oppose each other--for only one man may be the Grandmaster. Justin Gilead and Alexander Zharkov, two men driven by powerful forces they can neither understand nor deny--driven to fight each other in a battle for power that only one of them may win. Gilead, a magnificent athlete, an American, a genius, and a spy. Zharkov, a master strategist, head of the feared secret service agency, Nichevo, a determined, ambitious man. They first meet as ten-year-old chess prodigies-both lonely, both meaning to win, both born under the magical sign of the gold coiled serpent. They will come to know the uses of pleasure, the secrets of pain, the impact of evil turned upon itself. They will understand the deadly forces that grip the world in swift violence, sudden death. And they will finally know that only one man may be the Grandmaster. Grandmaster is an extraordinary tale of spymasters and assassins, murder and intrigue played against a background of Far Eastern mysticism from Moscow to Washington, from Havana to Tibet.

“A bravura performance…An entertaining book” (Kirkus Reviews) about the dramatic 2016 World Chess Championship between Norway’s Magnus Carlsen and Russia’s Sergey Karjakin, which mirrored the world’s geopolitical unrest and rekindled a global fascination with the sport. The first week of November 2016, hundreds of people descended on New York City’s South Street Seaport to watch the World Chess Championship between Norway’s Magnus Carlsen and Russia’s Sergey Karjakin. By the time it was over would be front-page news and thought by many the greatest finish in chess history. With both Carlsen and Karjakin just twenty-five years old, it was the first time the championship had been waged among those who grew up playing chess against computers. Originally from Crimea, Karjakin had recently repatriated to Russia under the direct assistance of Putin. Carlsen, meanwhile, had expressed admiration for Donald Trump, and the first move of the tournament he played was called a Trompowsky Attack. Then there was the Russian leader of the World Chess Federation being barred from attending due to US sanctions, and chess fanatic and Trump adviser Peter Thiel being called on to make the honorary first move in sudden death. That the tournament even required sudden death was a shock. Oddsmakers had given Carlsen, the defending champion, an eighty percent chance of winning. It would take everything he had to retain his title. Author Brin-Jonathan Butler was granted unique access to the two-and-half-week tournament and watched every move. The Grandmaster “is not the usual chronicle of a world-championship chess match….Butler offers insight into what it takes to become the best chess player on the planet...A vibrant and provocative look at chess and its metaphorical battle for territory and power” (Booklist).

This is a well-established training manual which encourages the average player to understand how a grandmaster thinks, and even more important, how he works. Kotov tackles fundamental issues such as knowing how and when to analyze, the tree of analysis, a selection of candidate moves and the factors of success.

Freshman Daniel Pratzer gets a chance to prove himself when the chess team invites him and his father to a weekend-long parent-child tournament. Daniel, thinking that his father is a novice, can't understand why his teammates want so badly for them to participate. Then he finds out the truth: as a teen, his father was one of the most promising young players in America, but the pressures of the game pushed him too far, and he had to give up chess to save his own life and sanity. Now, thirty years later, Mr. Pratzer returns to the game to face down an old competitor and the same dark demons that lurk in the corners of a mind stretched by the demands of the game. Daniel was looking for acceptance—but the secrets he uncovers about his father will force him to make some surprising moves himself, in Grandmaster by David Klass.

Alexander Kotov's trilogy, of which this is the second volume and now available in digital format for the first time, marks a landmark in chess literature. For the first time, a leading player managed to tackle the important elements of chess mastery in a methodical way which all chess players could understand, spiced with insight and colourful observation. Furthermore, his ideas and approach are as relevant to players today as they were when the books were first published. Alexander Kotov was one of the strongest players of the immediate post-war period, twice reaching the Candidates stage of the World Championship. He was also one of the leading Soviet trainers but is primarily remembered for his trilogy of classic works on chess coaching, of which Think Like a Grandmaster, one of the best-selling chess books of all time, was the first volume, and Play Like a Grandmaster the second.

This is the third book in the highly acclaimed Lessons with a Grandmaster series. In this volume Gulko and Sneed focus on both strategic and tactical ideas, and how to successfully combine the two parts over the board.

The epic tale of Grandmaster Sin Kwang The ́s extraordinary struggle and ultimate triumph to become the youngest Grandmaster in history. "The Last Grandmaster" artfully weaves the legendary stories of historic martial arts heroes with the Grandmaster¿s own life story, set against many riveting events in the history of modern China.