Are you craving a good Vegas-themed read to get you in the perfect mood for ALA? Pratice your poker face and spot the sleight of hand with a magic filled debut and a book of high stake tales.
The Hawley Book of the Dead: A Novel
By Chrysler Szarlan
Magic is in Revelation “Reve” Dyer’s blood. Together, she and her husband Jeremy have three daughters, a beautiful home, and a world-famous Las Vegas magic act. But when a myserious intruder tampers with the weapon used in one of the illusions in Reve’s act, she flees with the three girls to the only place she’s ever felt safe: the forest of Hawley Five Corners in Massachusetts. There she’ll discover The Hawley Book of the Dead, the ancient book that may hold the key to her family’s mysterious past…and ultimately, to her own future.
Brimming with rich history, suspense, and magic The Hawley Book if the Dead is perfect for fans of Sarah Addison Allen, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, and A Discovery of Witches, and will appeal to adult and young adult readers alike.
Request an eGalley before ALA.
The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death
By Colson Whitehead
The Noble Hustle is Pulitzer finalist Colson Whitehead’s hilarious memoir of his search for meaning at high stakes poker tables, which the author describes as “Eat, Pray, Love for depressed shut-ins.”
On one level, Colson Whitehead’s The Noble Hustle is a familiar species of participatory journalism—a longtime neighborhood poker player, Colson was given a $10,000 stake and an assignment from the online ESPN offshoot Grantland to see how far he could get in the World Series of Poker. The book is a brilliant, hilarious, weirdly profound, and ultimately moving portrayal of—yes, it sounds overblown and ridiculous, but really!—the human condition.
“As a novelist of considerable range, Whitehead consistently writes about more than he’s ostensibly writing about…here writing a poker book that should strike a responsive literary chord with some who know nothing about the game…Engaging in its color and character.”—Kirkus Reviews
Follow Colson on Twitter @ColsonWhitehead.
For a true portrayal of the city, read one of the Lucky O’Toole mystery series by Deborah Coonts (first is WANNA GET LUCKY). Even though they are fiction, the author (a resident of LV) gives an accurate portrayal of the glitz, glamour, and excess that is Las Vegas.