Lottery Tickets

Ray Shannon
Firecracker. G.P.Putnam's Sons, 2004.
A beautiful and resourceful pregnant woman only weeks from her due date...the charming but disingenuous Dallas Cowboy who fathered her baby...a sadistic man with delusions of a new life...and a Super Bowl betting slip worth a potential $1.25 million all come together in a rollercoaster ride of dark humor and suspense on the Las Vegas strip.

Carl Weberl, et al.
A Dollar and a Dream. Dalfina, 2005
Who hasn’t daydreamed about what we’d do if we won the lottery? A Dollar and a Dream features three bittersweet stories about people whose lives are forever changed after winning the lottery.

Steve Martini
The Attorney. G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2000
Jonah and his wife have been raising their eight-year-old granddaughter, Amanda. After Jonah wins a multi-million dollar state lottery, Jessica revives her interest in mothering. When Jonah won't deal-maternal rights for a megabucks payoff-Jessica pulls out all the stops.

Carl Hiaasen
Lucky You. Alfred A. Knopf, 1997
JoLayne's winning ticket isn't the only one. The other belongs to Bodean Gazzer and his raunchy sidekick, Chub, who want the whole $28 million jackpot to start their own underground militia.

Judy Baer
Million Dollar Dilemma. Steeple Hill Cafe, 2005
When over $20 million falls into her lap, Cassia Carr views her Midas touch as a cross, not a blessing—and certainly doesn't anticipate the difficulty of giving it all away!

Jim Kokoris
The Rich Part of Life. St. Martin's Press, 2001
Their lives have been quiet for a year since the real lifeblood of their household, Teddy's mother, died in a tragic car accident. On the one-year anniversary of her death, Teddy's stoic father plays his wife's favorite lottery numbers in a tender, uncharacteristic act. When it turns out that the family holds the $190 million winning ticket, their world is instantly transformed.

David Baldacci
The Winner. Warner Books, 1997
She is 20, beautiful, dirt-poor, and hoping for a better life for her infant daughter when LuAnn Tyler is offered the gift of a lifetime: a $100 million lottery jackpot. All she has to do is change her identity and leave the U.S. forever.

Poker-Card Games

Jill Davis
Girls' Poker Night. Random House, 2002
This novel won't reveal the secrets of winning at poker, but it does teach an attentive reader that dealing from the bottom of the deck doesn't work.

Pete Hautman
The Prop. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2006
National Book Award winner Pete Hautman delivers a fast-paced mystery set in the torrid, unforgiving Southwestern desert, where the stakes are sky high and all bets are off.

Milton T. Burton
The Rogues' Game. St. Martin's Press, 2005
A high stakes novel about the quest for revenge.

Wagers

Rick Reilly
Missing Links. Doubleday, 1996
Four middle-class, golf-addicted friends play on the Municipal Course while looking over to the exclusive Mayflower Country Club. A friendly wager is made about who will be the first to find his way onto the links at the Mayflower.

Jennifer Crusie
Bet Me. St. Martin's Press, 2004
Minerva Dobbs knows that happily-ever-after is a fairy tale, especially with a man who asked her to dinner to win a bet.

Metsy Hingle
The Wager. Mira Books, 2001
Sixty years ago, ownership of New Orleans's most luxurious hotel was lost in a foolish wager, costing its matriarch her greatest love. But now she's betting everything on a granddaughter she's never met

CASINOS

Dave Barry
Tricky Business. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2002
A tropical storm hits a casino boat off the coast of Florida, changing the lives of a quirky set of passengers

Martin Hegwood
Jackpot Bay. St Martin’s Minotaur, 2002
With gambling legal, he's going to turn his Jackpot Bay casino into the classiest, swankiest attraction this side of the Rockies-If only he can expand his business beyond blue-haired locals and low rollers in polyester suits.

Stephen Hunter
Havana (An Earl Swagger Novel). Simon & Schuster, 2003
High summer in Cuba, 1953, and Havana gleams with possibility. Flush with booming casinos, sex and drugs, Havana is a lucrative paradise for everyone from the Mafia, Domino Sugar, and United Fruit to pimps, porn-makers, and anyone looking to grab a piece of the action

Erin McCarthy
High Stakes. Berkley Sensation, 2006
He's a bloodsucking freak of nature. But, unlike other politicians, Ethan Carrick is actually a nice guy. Not to mention a very hot, wealthy, casino-owning vampire.

Michael McGarrity
The Big Gamble (A Kevin Kerney Novel). Dutton, 2002
When the body of a woman who went missing years earlier is discovered in a burned-down fruit stand, police Chief Kevin Kerney finds himself cooperating with his estranged son, Deputy Sheriff Clayton Istee, who is working to identify a suspect with ties to prostitution and illegal gambling. By the author of Tularosa.

Laura Pedersen
Beginner’s Luck. Ballantine, 2003
In Beginner's Luck, Laura Pedersen introduces us to the endearing oddballs and eccentrics of Cosgrove County, Ohio, who burst to life and steal our hearts--and none more so than Hallie Palmer, sixteen, savvy, and wise beyond her years, a young woman who knows life is a gamble . . . and sometimes you have to bet the house.

James Swain.
Mr. Lucky. Ballantine Books, c2005.
A dramatic escape from a fire at a Las Vegas casino changes Ricky Smith’s luck, transforming him into a major-league winner, until ex-cop Tony Valentine is hired by casino owners to prove that Ricky’s winning streak is anything but kosher.

Las Vegas

Steve Brewer
Bullets. Intrigue Press, 2003
When a contract killer bumps off a high roller in a Las Vegas casino, a tangle of romance, gambling, and gunplay follows.

Robyn Carr
Runaway Mistress. MIRA, 2005
Convinced she's next on Nick Noble's hit list, Jennifer Chaise takes off down the Vegas Strip armed with only her wits and a Kate Spade bag full of money.

Michael Connelly (ed.)
Murder in Vegas : New Crime Tales of Gambling and Desperation. Forge, 2005
A collection of original short crime and mystery stories.

Carole Nelson Douglas
Cat with an Emerald Eye (A Midnight Louie Mystery). Forge, 1996
When Temple discovers that the dead man was a debunker of false psychic phenomena, making any other supposed psychic in the room a prime suspect, she knows there's more to this case than meets the eye.

Joe McGinniss, Jr.
The Delivery Man. Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic, 2008
After attending college in New York, Chase returns to Vegas and is drawn into the lucrative but dangerous world of a teenage call-girl service with his childhood friend Michele, a beautiful Salvadoran immigrant with whom he shares a tragic past. Over the course of one extraordinary summer they will confront the violence and emptiness at the heart of the city and their generation.

Terry McMillan
A Day Late and a Dollar Short. Viking, Press, 2001
Las Vegas, 1994. The Prices are introduced by Viola, the family's matriarch: Her husband, Cecil, and their four adult kids, scattered across the country, seem determined to send her to her grave, or at least to the hospital with worrying.

Robert J. Randisi
Everybody Kills Somebody Sometime (A Rat Pack Mystery). Minotaur, 2006
Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford are the Kings of Cool---the Rat Pack. Ocean's 11 is their first movie together and they have taken Sin City by storm---filming during the day and cavorting onstage at the Sands Casino at night. It's clear not everyone is charmed, however, when Dean begins receiving anonymous threatening letters.

Rick Gadziola
Freezeout. ECW Press, 2005
Jake Morgan—an ex-cop, gambler, and casino dealer—finds himself in the midst of a 50-year-old mystery that could get him killed in this second installment of the Jake Morgan Mystery series.

Horse Racing

Dick Francis
10lb Penalty. GPPS, 1997
A wanna-be jockey accepts a job in his father's campaign for Parliament—and realizes that politics can be the most perilous horse race of all.

Declan Hughes
The Price of Blood. Morrow, 2008
What's in a name? Apparently everything for Ed Loy, because that's the only information Father Vincent Tyrrell, brother of prominent racehorse trainer F. X. Tyrrell, offers when he asks for Ed's help in finding a missing person. Even the best private eye needs more than just a name…

John McEvoy
Close Call. Poisoned Press, 2008
Jack Doyle is hired as the publicity director at Monee Park, a struggling race track owned by Celia McCann, but Doyle soon discovers that Celia is being threatened by thugs who are pressuring her to sell the valuable property to real estate developers.

Otto Penzler Otto (ed.)
Murder at the Racetrack. Mysterious Press, 2006
Original tales of mystery and mayhem down the final stretch from today’s great writers.

Nora Roberts
True Betrayals. Berkley, 2005
A romantic thriller set in the world of horse racing.

Lyndon Stacey
Outside Chance. Random House, 2006
Ben Copperfield is a freelance journalist who specializes in all things equine, so when he's called with the news that the hot favorite for Britain's Cheltenham Gold Cup has been kidnapped, just a few weeks before the race, he wastes no time in following up the story. This could be the racing scoop of a lifetime.

Compiled by Lisa Lindeman

Created and maintained by: Lynne M. Kennedy

© Copyright 2008 Sachem Public Library. All rights reserved

Sachem Public Library
150 Holbrook Road
Holbrook, New York 11741
631 588 5024

sachemlibrary.org