I’ve been playing card games since childhood, and have had a parallel interest in the mathematics behind the games for nearly as long. While I didn’t visit Las Vegas in person until 2000, the stories of how that city was built around the gaming industry quickly came to fascinate me. Digging into the details of the people who have made that city what it is and have come to make their way in the desert has been a fascinating sidelight that has enhanced my recent work writing books on gambling mathematics.
No list of Las Vegas entrepreneurs is complete without Bob Stupak, the marketing mastermind who successfully sold many tourists on a visit to Vegas World, a small casino at the far northern end of the Las Vegas Strip.
The self-described maverick challenged the more established Las Vegas casinos throughout his career, culminating in the building of the Stratosphere Tower which now anchors the Las Vegas skyline. His story mingling success and failure is skillfully told here by a titan of Nevada journalism.
Of all the modern Las Vegas casino operators, none had more flair than Bob Stupak. The self-proclaimed "Polish Maverick" rose from humble origins as the son of a Pittsburgh boss gambler to head one of the largest privately owned casinos in Las Vegas, the infamous Vegas World. Stupak parlayed a small slot joint into a $100 million-a-year gambling operation by manipulating the local and national media with outrageous stunts and promotions. His headline-grabbing handiwork is now the stuff of Las Vegas legend.
Remember Vegas World's VIP Vacation? Stupak's cleverly worded advertisements flooded millions of mailboxes around the country and appeared…
I love the psychology behind a good con. Con artists are the ultimate anti-heroes - masterful manipulators and highly observant, but unscrupulous at heart. And after reading a GQ article on “real-life superheroes” – people who dress up in homemade costumes and patrol their neighborhoods – I became fascinated by that psychology, too. Las Vegas is the capital of con and Cons—a unique city bursting with swindlers and cosplayers decked out in full regalia. What better place to set a crime novel? And thus—voila—Con Me Once was born.
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.
Whoever says crime doesn't pay isn't doing it right.
There are hundreds of casinos in Las Vegas, and Billy Cunningham knows how to rip off every one. His scams are a thing of beauty-so perfectly orchestrated that onlookers believe he and his crew are winning fair and square. In a town where bosses will kill to protect their profits, Billy can't afford to make mistakes, but even the best-laid plans can go wrong...
Desperate to keep his team out of jail, Billy agrees to help stop a legendary family of thieves from taking down a casino. But he has no…
I was a teenage drug addict, starting with alcohol then gradually moving onto marijuana then onto crystal meth. I wrote a memoir about my year as a methamphetamine that details my drug usages, and how it nearly destroyed my life and everyone around me.
A truly heartbreaking book about an alcoholic who travels to Las Vegas to drink himself to death, and the prostitute who falls in love with him. It’s a haunting story about addiction, but also a tragic love story. I feel this book is one of the best depictions of alcoholism, and how it can ultimately destroy you. The tragic story extended into real life as the author committed suicide a few weeks after signing the film rights. It is a hard read, but that’s what makes it amazing.
A re-issue of John O'Brien's debut novel, a masterpiece of modern realism about the perils of addiction and love in a city of loneliness.
Leaving Las Vegas, the first novel by John O'Brien, is the disturbing and emotionally wrenching story of a woman who embraces life and a man who rejects it.
Sera is a prostitute, content with the independence and routine she has carved out for herself in a city defined by recklessness. But she is haunted by a spectre in a yellow Mercedes, a man from her past who is committed to taking control of her life again.…
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.
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…
As the kid of tournament bridge and Scrabble players, I’ve been hooked on games my whole life. None more so than poker, which has helped me make a living both at the tables and as a writer. I’m currently working on a TV adaptation of Ship It Holla Ballas!
Poker is an American game—maybe the most American game—but an Englishman elevated it into something literary: in 1981, Al Alvarez, a poet, editor, and critic best known for introducing the world to Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, traveled to Las Vegas to chronicle the World Series of Poker. His deceptively breezy account of the larger-than-life characters who played a card game for nosebleed stakes inspired a new generation of players to discover the world’s hardest way to make an easy living.
Al Alvarez touched down in Las Vegas one hot day in 1981, a dedicated amateur poker player but a stranger to the town and its crazy ways. For three mesmerizing weeks he witnessed some of the monster high-stakes games that could only have happened in Vegas and talked to the extraordinary characters who dominated them--road gamblers and local professionals who won and lost fortunes on a regular basis.
Set over the course of one tournament, The Biggest Game in Town is botha chronicle of the World Series of Poker--the first ever written--and a portrait of the hustlers, madmen, and geniuses…
I’m deeply passionate about helping others find ways to work through their emotions. After surviving a mass shooting in 2015 the first place I turned to was the library. I quickly found myself frustrated and lacking when I couldn’t find books to help me understand what I was going through and what to expect next. It was terribly discouraging as I found it difficult to express myself to my loved ones. When I started to find books like the ones on this list, it opened a world to me that I had to be a part of – books that help people process difficult emotions.
I won’t lie, this is a difficult one for me to get through having survived a mass shooting myself. As an anthology, it serves as a powerful testimony to the survivors of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting which took the lives of 60. What I think is unique about this anthology is that several artists and authors collaborated on pieces that share social perceptions on a myriad of issues surrounding mass shootings in the U.S. Where We Live serves as a near time capsule dedicated to the effects of the deadliest single incident mass shooting.
On October 1, 2017, Las Vegas, Nevada
suffered the worst mass shooting in modern American history, resulting in 58
deaths and over 500 injured. It broke my heart. Las Vegas is my home. I felt
like something needed to be done to help in a unique way." - JH
WILLIAMS III, Artist & Curating
Editor
This "unique way"
was the genesis of the WHERE WE LIVE anthology-a riveting collection of
both fictional stories and actual eye-witness accounts told by an all-star
line-up of the top talent working in comics today. All the creators have
graciously volunteered their time and talent…
I love the psychology behind a good con. Con artists are the ultimate anti-heroes - masterful manipulators and highly observant, but unscrupulous at heart. And after reading a GQ article on “real-life superheroes” – people who dress up in homemade costumes and patrol their neighborhoods – I became fascinated by that psychology, too. Las Vegas is the capital of con and Cons—a unique city bursting with swindlers and cosplayers decked out in full regalia. What better place to set a crime novel? And thus—voila—Con Me Once was born.
If you’re burned out from all that darkness, this book takes a more lighthearted approach to the classic Vegas con novel and features another mainstay of Las Vegas entertainment – the magician. It’s not haute literature—it got mixed reviews– but it’s also a fast, fun read with a great audio version, if you prefer. It’s part of a globetrotting series with stops in Amsterdam, Paris, Venice, and Berlin, featuring thief/magician/crime novelist Charlie Howard and his literary agent, Victoria.
Chris Ewan's The Good Thief's Guide to Vegas is the next caper in a series that’s being called “impressive… comic…fresh” (Publishers Weekly--starred review). Charlie Howard isn’t only a part-time crime writer and part-time thief; he’s also a magician. For his next trick, he’ll relieve Josh Masters, the famous illusionist vying for the affections of Charlie’s friend Victoria, of $60,000 in casino chips stashed in his hotel safe.
Revenge would be sweet—if there weren’t a dead redhead floating in Masters’ bathtub and if Masters hadn’t just disappeared in a puff of smoke after cheating at roulette. Convinced that Charlie was in…
I like to read about people pursuing their dream because that’s not an easy thing to do. When I was working as a lawyer at a corporate law firm, I was sure I wanted to become a partner. But eventually I realized that being in-house counsel at a company was a much better fit for me so I changed jobs. And similarly, I’d always wanted to write a romantic comedy and so, after many years as a lawyer, I started taking courses at night, and eventually I found the courage to quit my legal job and pursue this passion. The underlying theme of all of my books is to encourage readers to pursue their dreams.
The Summer of Sebastian features computer programmer Helen Hobbs and Olympic athlete Sebastian Clarke, so there are no lawyers here, although Sebastian with his fake dating contract and his citing the various clauses makes a good lawyer stand-in.
Helen wants to save the only home she’s ever known—an idyllic cottage set in the middle of Mendip Hills, near Bristol in the UK. She’s willing to do anything for her dream—and that includes fake dating Sebastian for money.
I adore fake dating romances and this one gets it right—especially with the brilliant banter between Helen and Sebastian. And I love how Helen and Sebastian figure out how to make their dreams a reality.
Olympic athlete Sebastian Clarke has six weeks to repair the damage to his reputation or lose the funding he needs to finally win that gold. Working as a sports ambassador in England for the summer is the perfect way to prove to his sponsors that he’s still their wholesome hero, and to seal the deal, he’s hired a sweet university librarian to pose as his girlfriend. Cassie is nothing like the Las Vegas showgirls the media stirred the truth with last month, but when she turns up late for their first meeting, Seb doesn’t expect to…
Maybe it's because I'm an Aquarius, or maybe it's because I ate crayons as a kid. But people who know me well can confirm that I'm an oddball who has never fit neatly into boxes or been easy to categorize. Perhaps that’s why I've always enjoyed reading books that defy rules, break barriers, and cross genres. As an author, while I love grounding my books in reality for maximum authenticity, my stories definitely color outside the lines (see earlier crayon reference). I love reading and writing about the unconventional and the unexpected. If you're looking for romances that will take you off the beaten path, this list is for you.
In a genre where "happily ever after" so often means marriage and children, it is definitely unconventional to start a romance novel with themes of relationships ending and infertility. (I feel safely in non-spoiler territory, here, since these themes are introduced in the first two pages.) It's an intense start to a deeply emotional and richly layered contemporary romance set against the glitz and grit of the Las Vegas strip. This is my favorite kind of romance, in which two wonderful but wounded souls redeem and heal each other by courageously embracing the deep power of love. Add in Rosanna Leo's smooth, masterful writing and perfectly timed razor-sharp wit, and you have an incredible read ahead of you!
Alex just acquired Sin City’s hottest casino hotel, and he’s determined to make Vice the ultimate pleasure palace—along with the mind-blowing new club, Covet. But behind the successful entrepreneur façade, Alex struggles with a past that continues to haunt him, day in and day out. After a surprise hookup with a beautiful stranger, he thinks he’s found the perfect distraction…until she walks out, leaving him with an unfamiliar ache which the pulse-pounding nights of excess at Covet can’t soothe. When their paths cross once again, Alex realizes Dana is so much more than a mere distraction. He wants her—all of…
I’ve always adored romance books—there’s nothing like the thrill of meeting characters that you know you’re going to fall in love with just as much as they’re going to fall in love with each other. I didn’t start out intending to write about rock stars. But when I was sitting down in front of that first blank screen looking for inspiration, it was a rock star that took shape in my mind. There is something so inherently appealing about the artistic, tortured souls of musicians. Relationships in the spotlight come with very special challenges, and I love exploring how characters navigate these while still developing passionate, soul-deep emotional bonds.
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.
Waking up in Vegas was never meant to be like this.
Evelyn Thomas's plans for celebrating her twenty-first birthday in Las Vegas were big. Huge. But she sure never meant to wake up on the bathroom floor with a hangover to rival the black plague, a very attractive half-naked tattooed man in her room, and a diamond on her finger large enough to scare King Kong. Now if she could just remember how it all happened.
One thing is certain, being married to one of the hottest rock stars on the planet is sure to be a wild ride.
