Growing up in a strait-laced Southern family, I was always fascinated with casinos. In my twenties on a summer hiatus from teaching in North Carolina, I drove to California and became a dealer at Caesars in Lake Tahoe. My mother highly disapproved of my working in a casino, "a place so bad it has 'sin' in the middle." Eventually, I returned east to take a hi-tech job in Boston. I also began working on my MFA in writing at Emerson. My characters were breathed into life from my years in the gambling industry. You learn a lot about the human personality when you watch thousands of people from behind the felt of a blackjack table.
This is a book made from a screenplay that tells the story from behind the felt. As a croupier you can always tell if an author knows their stuff. Stepping behind the table as a dealer Jack Manfred a rejected author becomes enmeshed in his new job. He intends to write a novel about this fascinating world of casinos. As a writer myself I can relate to his need to tell his story. London dealers are considered the gold standard in the casino world. Their intense training thins the herd. I know because my husband learned to deal at an upscale London casino just like Jack. Ray also went to The Grecian Grill an all-night Greek restaurant in the West End after his shift. That touch of authenticity gave Croupier my stamp of approval.
You have to make a choice in life. Be a gambler or a croupier. Then live with your decision come what may. It's all numbers, the croupier thought. A spin of the wheel. A turn of a card. The time of your life. The date of your birth. The year of your death. In the Book of Numbers the Lord said: "Thou shalt count thy steps." A wave of elation came over him. He was hooked again. Watching people lose. His existence was forming an interesting pattern of betrayals. Sometimes he was unsure whether he was the betrayer or the…
As a blackjack dealer I have watched compulsive gamblers for most of my career. I have always said, “It’s hard to walk away from a winning streak, even harder to leave the table when you’re on a losing one.” A familiar tale that sums up the life of Brian Malony. He became hooked on the glitz and glamour of Caesars in Atlantic City. Most people will play until they lose all their money. Brian did that and then embezzled more money from his employer a major Canadian bank. A must-read story that tracks the progression of his addiction.
This is the story of Brian Molony who embezzled over $10 million from his employers to feed his insatiable appetite for gambling. The book investigates how an assistant manager could write scores of fraudulent loans and not be detected, how he could function competantly on one level when on another level he was completely out of control. To his customers he was decisive and helpful. To his friends he was a quiet, drily humorous man who enjoyed watching sport on TV. To his girlfriends he was shy but engaging. But none of them knew about the man who bet $5000…
Standing behind the table, blackjack dealers are always on the lookout for card counters, find one and they are booted out. Can a team from M.I.T. really break the casino? Card counting is all in the math and as he and his fellow team members hit Vegas they learn how to bet on the count. I think this book really shines when he goes behind the scenes to explore the deceptions the team went through to try to deceive the casino. Well, they can for a while and it’s fun to follow them on their rise and fall.
The #1 national bestseller, now a major motion picture, 21—the amazing inside story about a gambling ring of M.I.T. students who beat the system in Vegas—and lived to tell how.
Robin Hood meets the Rat Pack when the best and the brightest of M.I.T.’s math students and engineers take up blackjack under the guidance of an eccentric mastermind. Their small blackjack club develops from an experiment in counting cards on M.I.T.’s campus into a ring of card savants with a system for playing large and winning big. In less than two years they take some of the world’s most sophisticated…
How does a girl go from working in a Thai restaurant to running a sports gambling operation in Costa Rica? All roads lead through Las Vegas, where Beth meets Dink a math genius. Sports bettors love to hang out in casinos it’s like a contact high. He hires her and she trains in the Vegas casinos. She not only becomes enthralled with the eccentric Dink and the colorful cast of characters that surround him but she shares their stories with you. It was the early days of Internet gambling, a free for all or so they thought. It is great to view the industry through the observant eyes of Beth whose colorful descriptions bring the characters to life.
“Beth Raymer’s crackling, hilarious memoir ricochets through the gambling underworld in Las Vegas, and is peopled with all manner of lovable wack-jobs, none of whom is quite as wacky—or lovable—as Raymer herself.”—Marie Claire
Beth Raymer waited tables at a dive in Las Vegas until a customer sent her to see Dink, of Dink Inc., one of the town’s biggest professional sports gamblers. Dink needed a right-hand man—someone who would show up on time, who had a head for numbers, and who didn’t steal. Beth got the job.
Lay the Favorite is the story of Beth’s years in the high-stakes, high-anxiety…
This is a novel based on Frederick’s own gambling addiction on the Mississippi riverboats. Ray and Jewel Kaiser love to gamble, until a fun night out becomes a compulsion. They find themselves showing up at the Paradise casino all hours of the day and night, becoming intimate with the employees and escalating their bets. After visiting the area, I knew the scenes in the casino ring true and the dialogue is so on point, that you root for Ray and Jewel even though in the back of your mind you know the house always wins.
A New York Times Notable Book In this darkly funny story, Ray and Jewel Kaiser try (and push) their luck at the Paradise casino. Peopled with dazed denizens, body-pierced children, a lusty grocery-store manager, and hourly employees in full revolt, this is a novel about wising up sooner rather than later--"a wise and funny tale" (New York Times Book Review) that is "masterfully observed" (John Barth).
Caroline Popov, alone, heartbroken, and deeply in debt ends up in glamorous Palm Springs, California where Native casinos have just opened, offering employment to thousands. She lands a job at the Palm Oasis Casino and is mentored by the charismatic tribal chairman, John Tovar. Embraced by casino culture, Caroline works her way up to casino manager of the Night Hawk, in the High Desert town of Joshua Tree. There, she is responsible for managing multicultural team members, satisfying the demands of challenging guests, growing revenue while rooting out corruption. In the painful process of rediscovering her inner strength, she learns, you have to gamble like your life depends on it. With her life on the line can she pull out a win?
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.
The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…
