The Ballad of a Small Player

The Ballad of a Small Player PDF Author: Lawrence Osborne
Publisher: Hogarth
ISBN: 0804137994
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
A riveting tale of risk and obsession set in the alluring world of Macau’s casinos, by the author of the critically acclaimed The Forgiven. As night falls on Macau and the neon signs that line the rain-slick streets come alive, Doyle – “Lord Doyle” to his fellow players – descends into his casino of choice to try his luck at the baccarat tables that are the anchor of his current existence. A corrupt English lawyer who has escaped prosecution by fleeing to the East, Doyle spends his nights drinking and gambling and his days sleeping off his excesses, continually haunted by his past. Taking refuge in a series of louche and dimly lit hotels, he watches his fortune rise and fall as the cards decide his fate. In a moment of crisis he meets Dao-Ming, an enigmatic Chinese woman who appears to be a denizen of the casinos just like himself, and seems to offer him salvation in the form of both money and love. But as Doyle attempts to make a rare and true connection, all that he accepts as reality seems to be slipping from his grasp. Resonant of classics by Dostoevsky and Graham Greene, The Ballad of a Small Player is a timeless tale steeped in eerie suspense and rich atmosphere.

The Ballad of a Small Player

The Ballad of a Small Player PDF Author: Lawrence Osborne
Publisher: Hogarth
ISBN: 0804137994
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
A riveting tale of risk and obsession set in the alluring world of Macau’s casinos, by the author of the critically acclaimed The Forgiven. As night falls on Macau and the neon signs that line the rain-slick streets come alive, Doyle – “Lord Doyle” to his fellow players – descends into his casino of choice to try his luck at the baccarat tables that are the anchor of his current existence. A corrupt English lawyer who has escaped prosecution by fleeing to the East, Doyle spends his nights drinking and gambling and his days sleeping off his excesses, continually haunted by his past. Taking refuge in a series of louche and dimly lit hotels, he watches his fortune rise and fall as the cards decide his fate. In a moment of crisis he meets Dao-Ming, an enigmatic Chinese woman who appears to be a denizen of the casinos just like himself, and seems to offer him salvation in the form of both money and love. But as Doyle attempts to make a rare and true connection, all that he accepts as reality seems to be slipping from his grasp. Resonant of classics by Dostoevsky and Graham Greene, The Ballad of a Small Player is a timeless tale steeped in eerie suspense and rich atmosphere.

Hunters in the Dark

Hunters in the Dark PDF Author: Lawrence Osborne
Publisher: Hogarth
ISBN: 0553447351
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
From the novelist the New York Times compares to Paul Bowles, Evelyn Waugh and Ian McEwan, an evocative new work of literary suspense Adrift in Cambodia and eager to side-step a life of quiet desperation as a small-town teacher, 28-year-old Englishman Robert Grieve decides to go missing. As he crosses the border from Thailand, he tests the threshold of a new future. And on that first night, a small windfall precipitates a chain of events-- involving a bag of “jinxed” money, a suave American, a trunk full of heroin, a hustler taxi driver, and a rich doctor’s daughter-- that changes Robert’s life forever. Hunters in the Dark is a sophisticated game of cat and mouse redolent of the nightmares of Patricia Highsmith, where identities are blurred, greed trumps kindness, and karma is ruthless. Filled with Hitchcockian twists and turns, suffused with the steamy heat and pervasive superstition of the Cambodian jungle, and unafraid to confront difficult questions about the machinations of fate, this is a masterful novel that confirms Lawrence Osborne’s reputation as one of our finest contemporary writers.

Bangkok Days

Bangkok Days PDF Author: Lawrence Osborne
Publisher: North Point Press
ISBN: 1429957328
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
A PASSIONATE, AFFECTIONATE RECORD OF ADVENTURES AND MISADVENTURES IN THE WORLD'S HOTTEST METROPOLIS Tourists come to Bangkok for many reasons—a sex change operation, a night with two prostitutes dressed as nuns, a stay in a luxury hotel. Lawrence Osborne comes for the cheap dentistry. Broke (but no longer in pain), he finds that he can live in Bangkok on a few dollars a day. And so the restless exile stays. Osborne's is a visceral experience of Bangkok, whether he's wandering the canals that fill the old city; dining at the No Hands Restaurant, where his waitress feeds him like a baby; or launching his own notably unsuccessful career as a gigolo. A guide without inhibitions, Osborne takes us to a feverish place where a strange blend of ancient Buddhist practice and new sexual mores has created a version of modernity only superficially indebted to the West. Bangkok Days is a love letter to the city that revived Osborne's faith in adventure and the world.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (A Hunger Games Novel)

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (A Hunger Games Novel) PDF Author: Suzanne Collins
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 1338635182
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 747

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Book Description
Ambition will fuel him. Competition will drive him. But power has its price. It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute. The odds are against him. He's been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined - every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute . . . and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.

The Wet and the Dry

The Wet and the Dry PDF Author: Lawrence Osborne
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0770436897
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Selected as a Top Ten Book of the Year by Dwight Garner, New York Times A “fearlessly honest account” (Financial Times) of man’s love of drink, and an insightful meditation on the meaning of alcohol consumption across cultures worldwide Drinking alcohol: a beloved tradition, a dangerous addiction, even “a sickness of the soul” (as once described by a group of young Muslim men in Bali). In his wide-ranging travels, Lawrence Osborne—a veritable connoisseur himself—has witnessed opposing views of alcohol across cultures worldwide, compelling him to wonder: is drinking alcohol a sign of civilization and sanity, or the very reverse? Where do societies fall on the spectrum between indulgence and restraint? An immersing, controversial, and often irreverent travel narrative, The Wet and the Dry offers provocative, sometimes unsettling insights into the deeply embedded conflicts between East and West, and the surprising influence of drinking on the contemporary world today. Now with an excerpt from Lawrence Osborne's latest novel, The Ballad of a Small Player.

Ballad

Ballad PDF Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Publisher: North Star Editions, Inc.
ISBN: 0738721972
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
James Morgan’s gift for music has attracted Nuala, a soul-snatching faerie who feeds on the creative energies of exceptional humans until they die. While collaborating on a musical composition, James and Nuala unexpectedly fall in love. When James realizes that Nuala is being hunted, he plunges into a soul-scorching battle with the Faerie Queen.

The Glass Kingdom

The Glass Kingdom PDF Author: Lawrence Osborne
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473565200
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
A tense, stunningly well-observed heist novel from 'the bastard child of Graham Greene and Patrica Highsmith' (Metro) Sarah Talbot Jennings, a young American living in New York, has fled to Bangkok to disappear. Armed with a suitcase full of cash, she takes up residence at the Kingdom, a glittering complex slowly sinking into its own twilight. There, against a backdrop of shadowy gossip and intrigue, she is soon drawn into the orbit of the Kingdom's glamorous ex-pat women. But when political chaos and a frenzied uprising wrack the streets below, and Sarah witnesses something unspeakable, her safe haven begins to feel like a trap. From a master of atmosphere and suspense comes a brilliantly unsettling story of cruelty and psychological unrest, and an enthralling glimpse into the shadowy crossroads of karma and human greed.

Ania Malina

Ania Malina PDF Author: Lawrence Osborne
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN: 9780140113105
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description


The Ballad of Lord Edward and Citizen Small

The Ballad of Lord Edward and Citizen Small PDF Author: Neil Jordan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1639364544
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
From Academy Award-winning film director Neil Jordan comes an artful reimagining of an extraordinary friendship spanning the revolutionary tumult of the eighteenth century. South Carolina, 1781: the American Revolution. An enslaved man escaping to his freedom saves the life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, a British army officer and the younger son of one of Ireland's grandest families. The tale that unfolds is narrated by Tony Small, the formerly enslaved man who becomes Fitzgerald's companion—and best friend. While details of Lord Edward's life are well documented, little is known of Tony Small, who is at the heart of this moving novel. In this gripping narrative, his character considers the ironies of empire, captivity, and freedom, mapping Lord Edward's journey from being a loyal subject of the British Empire to becoming a leader of the disastrous Irish rebellion of 1798. This powerful new work of fiction brings Neil Jordan's inimitable storytelling ability to the revolutions that shaped the eighteenth century—in America, France, and, finally, in Ireland.

Ballad of the Whiskey Robber

Ballad of the Whiskey Robber PDF Author: Julian Rubinstein
Publisher: Back Bay Books
ISBN: 0316028282
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
An award-wining and "outrageously entertaining" true crime story (San Francisco Chronicle) about the professional hockey player-turned-bank robber whose bizarre and audacious crime spree galvanized Hungary in the decade after the fall of the Iron Curtain. During the 1990s, while playing for the biggest hockey team in Budapest, Attila Ambrus took up bank robbery to make ends meet. Arrayed against him was perhaps the most incompetent team of crime investigators the Eastern Bloc had ever seen: a robbery chief who had learned how to be a detective by watching dubbed Columbo episodes; a forensics man who wore top hat and tails on the job; and a driver so inept he was known only by a Hungarian word that translates to Mound of Ass-Head. Ballad of the Whiskey Robber is the completely bizarre and hysterical story of the crime spree that made a nobody into a somebody, and told a forlorn nation that sometimes the brightest stars come from the blackest holes. Like The Professor and the Madman and The Orchid Thief, Julian Rubinstein's bizarre crime story is so odd and so wicked that it is completely irresistible. "A whiz-bang read...Hilarious and oddly touching...Rubinstein writes in a guns-ablazing style that perfectly fits the whiskey robber's tale." --Salon