62 books like The Good Thief's Guide to Vegas

Hunter S. Thompson’s books tend to have a lot of drug use in them. So do mine, although not at nearly the same scale. The way Thompson describes the drug use and deranged behavior associated with it is powerful and equal parts tragedy and comedy.

More than anything, Thompson’s cracking prose brings the debauchery to life and makes it relatable to anyone who ever may have gone one toke over the line. I used to give this book to friends who hadn’t cracked a book since high school and told them, “Just read the first page.” Every single one of them borrowed the book and read it cover to cover.

At a whopping 1,152 pages, Stephen King’s The Stand was just too much to capture in a single movie.

That’s why, in 1994, CBS adapted it across four, ninety-minute episodes of a limited run “mini-series” (a fancy way of saying “a really long movie”). In all fairness, it had a great cast and was better than it had any right to be, and was far more enjoyable than CBS’s 2020 attempt at a do-over.

But even with a total six-hour runtime, it couldn’t capture all the story, heart, and nuance that made the book so incredible. It’s a feat to read, one I did to pass the time when bored in school, and one I will surely do again in the future.

This 1960 book by George Clayton Johnson, who wrote the scripts for The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and the sci-fi film Logan’s Run, was a tie-in for the original Ocean’s Eleven movie featuring the Rat Pack. It’s hard to find, but worth it as it contains all the elements of a classic Vegas con – the mob, the girlfriend, the complex relationships between the conmen and their marks. It delves into the characters more than either movie, although admittedly, it’s impossible to read the book without picturing the 2001 film and its star-studded cast. 

The tagline says it all – “Whoever says crime doesn’t pay isn’t doing it right.” Pubbed in 2015, this book is often compared to Ocean’s Eleven as it contains the same main elements: the con artist and his experienced crew, the girl, Vegas. What’s opposite is the focus – this book emphasizes plot over character. While I love this book’s complex con-within-a-con, Billy Cunningham is not particularly likable as a main character. If you enjoy Vegas’s dark side, this book and its two sequels, Bad Action and Super Con, are for you. 

This book stands out from the rest on my list because it’s about a gambler, not a casino executive. 

Barry Meadow set out to play blackjack in every casino in Nevada one fall. Blackjack Autumn chronicles his travels and adventures across every corner of the state: the good, the bad, and the ugly. He tells the tales of a card counter experiencing wide variation in casino amenities and game protection strategies, interspersed with some provocative thoughts on life in general. 

This is more than a book about blackjack; it’s a series of personal adventures that I frequently reread to this day.

Lick was another of my earliest rock star romance reads. It takes the rock star trope and combines it together with the accidentally married trope, and I loved every second of it! It was so much fun reading about how these strangers deal with waking up after a wild night out on the town in Las Vegas only to realize they’re now married. That would be difficult enough without one of them being a very famous rock star. This story is sexy, entertaining, heartbreaking, and heartwarming, all at the same time. Not always an easy combination to pull off, but Kylie Scott manages it beautifully.

In-depth interviews with eight of the most successful modern-day gambling pros. Billy Walters, the most successful sports bettor in Las Vegas history, had a 30-year winning streak and was so feared by the Vegas sports books, he had to hire “runners” to place his bets because the casinos refused his action. Tommy Hyland ran the biggest and longest-lasting blackjack team in history, winning millions from casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas. Alan Woods has won hundreds of millions using a computer system to beat the race tracks in Hong Kong. The interview format makes for truly compelling reading, as you get to learn these gamblers’ secrets in their own words.

Anastasia Pollock is caught in an outrageous situation. Husband, Karl, is at a sales meeting in Harrisburg. No, wait! He drops dead in Las Vegas where he has gambled away their nest egg, tuition for their sons’ college, and $50,000 he owes a loan shark. Lucille, Anastasia’s hateful mother-in-law, an outspoken eighty-something card-carrying Communist, has moved in with Anastasia because she’s broke and has nowhere to go. Anastasia designs projects for a craft magazine, and Marlys, her self-centered fashion editor, is found dead, glued to Anastasia’s office chair. When it turns out that Karl and Marlys were having an affair, Anastasia is the prime suspect in the murder. Anastasia survives all this with sarcastic humor, deadpan comments, and a parrot who quotes Shakespeare. First in a highly successful series.

Forgotten Man is a natural follow-up to Grandissimo, as it tells the story of Bill Bennett, the casino executive who took over Circus Circus from Jay Sarno and built it into a successful resort catering to low-rolling visitors to Nevada. 

Bennett had a rocky start in the business world in Phoenix before moving into the gaming industry at Circus Circus, and his path to a successful career in casino management is told entirely through interviews with those who knew him and worked with him.

For me, personally, this book taught me how truly lucky I was while living in my truck for 5 years in the early 2000s. 15-year-old Lutie and her 12-year-old brother, Fate, are thrown into a desperate adventure after their stepmom dies. Their odyssey across America in an attempt to find their long-lost father, and the perils of being homeless in Las Vegas and avoiding the life-threatening perils of living in a car and dodging unsavory and predatory people, is a harshly realistic depiction of...well, reality.