**A New York Times top 100 Notable Book of the Year** Alexander Bruno is a man with expensive problems. Sporting a tuxedo and trotting the globe, he has spent his adult life as a professional gambler. His particular line of work: backgammon, at which he extracts large sums of money from men who think they can challenge his peerless acumen. In Singapore, his luck turned. Maybe it had something to do with the Blot – a black spot which has emerged to distort Bruno’s vision. It’s not showing any signs of going away. As Bruno extends his losing streak in Berlin, it becomes clinically clear that the Blot is the symptom of something terrible. There’s a surgeon who can help, but surgery is going to involve a lot of money, and worse: returning home to the garish, hash-smoke streets of Berkeley, California. Here, the unseemly Keith Stolarsky – a childhood friend in possession of an empire of themed burger bars and thrift stores – is king. And he’s willing to help Bruno out. But there was always going to be a price.
The author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude returns with a devilishly entertaining novel about an international backgammon hustler who thinks he's psychic. Too bad about the tumor in his face. Alexander Bruno travels the world playing high stakes backgammon and hunting for amateur “whales” who think they can challenge him. Lately he’s had a run of bad luck, not helped by the blot that has emerged in his field of vision, which forces him to look at the board sideways. As the blot grows larger, his game gets worse, until, at an opulent mansion in Berlin, he passes out in the middle of a match and receives an alarming diagnosis. Out of money and out of friends, he turns to the only person who can help (and the last person he wants to see): a high-rolling former childhood acquaintance who agrees to pay for Bruno’s experimental surgery in Berkeley. But Berkeley is the place where Bruno discovered his psychic gift and where he vowed never to return. There, forced to confront patchouli flashbacks and his uncertain future, he must ask himself: Is he playing the game, or is the game playing him?
The relapse rate for addicts in conventional treatment programs is a shocking 70-90%, despite the best efforts of family members, doctors, and the addicts themselves. Drawing on the latest addiction research, Creative Care founders Morteza and Karen Khaleghi argue that the reason so many addicts fail to make headway is because, too often, they focus on the addiction only, and not the many factors that contribute to it. Readers will learn how to: * recognize what people and situations drive their addiction * peel back the layers of their life to understand the roots of helplessness and dependency * rewrite family dynamics and end the cycle of addiction. This is an eye-opening look for addicts and family members that will show them how to discover the heart of problem, and overcome it.
Featuring a brand new introduction from Alexandra Heminsley, talking about what Jackie and her books mean to her! ‘What radiates from all of her novels is a sense that women are just as capable of great things as men’ ALEXANDRA HEMINSLEY 'Jackie Collins’s daring, unapologetic stroke of the pen, combined with her glorious wit, has single-handedly given creative license to new generations of authors and storytellers.' COLLEEN HOOVER Al King, the rock-and-roll super stud who is everything any sex-crazed groupie ever imagined her hero to be; and Dallas, the beauty queen whose sky-high ambitions stem from a sordid secret-the type that tabloids tingle to tell. Together, they're on a wild ride from London to New York, from Hollywood to Rio and the steaming jungles of the Amazon-where all their dreams and nightmares are about to come true…LOVERS & GAMBLERS There have been many imitators, but only ever one Jackie Collins. With millions of her books sold around the world, and thirty-one New York Times bestsellers, she is one of the world’s top-selling novelists. From glamorous Beverly Hills bedrooms to Hollywood movie studios; from glittering rock concerts to the yachts of billionaires, Jackie chronicled the scandalous lives of the rich, famous, and infamous from the inside looking out. 'A true inspiration, a trail blazer for women's fiction' JILLY COOPER ‘Jackie shows us all what being a strong, successful woman means at any age’ MILLY JOHNSON ‘Jackie will never be forgotten, she’ll always inspire me to #BeMoreJackie’ JILL MANSELL ‘Jackie’s heroines don’t take off their clothes to please a man, but to please themselves’ CLARE MACKINTOSH ‘Legend is a word used too lightly for so many undeserving people, but Jackie is the very definition of the word’ ALEX KHAN ‘What Jackie knew how to do so well, is to tell a thumping good story’ ROWAN COLEMAN ‘Here is a woman who not only wanted to entertain her readers, but also to teach them something; about the world and about themselves’ ISABELLE BROOM ‘Jackie is the queen of cliff-hangers’ SAMANTHA TONGE ‘For all her trademark sass, there is a moralist at work here’ LOUISE CANDLISH ‘Nobody does it quite like Jackie and nobody ever will’ SARRA MANNING ‘Collins was saying that women didn’t have to centre round men, either in books or in life’ JESSIE BURTON ‘Jackie lived the Hollywood dream, but, she looked sideways at it, and then shared the dirt with her readers’ JULIET ASHTON
A New York Times Book Review EDITORS' CHOICE. From the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn, comes the vividly told story of Dylan Ebdus growing up white and motherless in downtown Brooklyn in the 1970s. In a neighborhood where the entertainments include muggings along with games of stoopball, Dylan has one friend, a black teenager, also motherless, named Mingus Rude. Through the knitting and unraveling of the boys' friendship, Lethem creates an overwhelmingly rich and emotionally gripping canvas of race and class, superheros, gentrification, funk, hip-hop, graffiti tagging, loyalty, and memory. "A tour de force.... Belongs to a venerable New York literary tradition that stretches back through Go Tell It on the Mountain, A Walker in the City, and Call it Sleep." --The New York Times Magazine "One of the richest, messiest, most ambitious, most interesting novels of the year.... Lethem grabs and captures 1970s New York City, and he brings it to a story worth telling." --Time
If you feel as if you can no longer control your gambling, if your gambling has interfered with your family, social, or working life, this workbook can help you take back control. Though gambling has become increasingly prevalent in society, pathological gambling is a serious condition. Pathological gamblers find they are unable to participate in their social lives, have problems at work, and end up in financial trouble because they feel compelled to keep gambling. Much of this problem comes from incorrect beliefs about the nature of the game; people believe they can beat the system or learn to control the outcome of games of chance. In this treatment, you will learn not only how to avoid problem situations, but also the truth about gambling. Overcoming Your Pathological Gambling is written by researchers who have spent over two decades studying the psychology of gambling. This book represents the treatment they have found to be most effective at controlling the urge to gamble, understanding the true nature of gambling games, and preventing future gambling problems. Intended for use in conjunction with supervised therapy, this workbook includes various self-assessments and exercises designed to help you reach the ultimate goal of complete abstinence from gambling. This workbook and the corresponding therapist guide form a complete treatment package that will help you overcome your gambling problem and learn recovery skills that are useful for a lifetime. TreatmentsThatWorkTM represents the gold standard of behavioral healthcare interventions! · All programs have been rigorously tested in clinical trials and are backed by years of research · A prestigious scientific advisory board, led by series Editor-In-Chief David H. Barlow, reviews and evaluates each intervention to ensure that it meets the highest standard of evidence so you can be confident that you are using the most effective treatment available to date · Our books are reliable and effective and make it easy for you to provide your clients with the best care available · Our corresponding workbooks contain psychoeducational information, forms and worksheets, and homework assignments to keep clients engaged and motivated · A companion website (www.oup.com/us/ttw) offers downloadable clinical tools and helpful resources · Continuing Education (CE) Credits are now available on select titles in collaboration with PsychoEducational Resources, Inc. (PER)
'If you want to bet on numbers, go to a casino. If you want theatre, go to the races.' - Les Carlyon All his life, Andrew Rule has watched racing's heroes and villains, dreamers and schemers. In Chance, he distils the daring, the desperation and danger of the track, peeling back some of racing's most famous and infamous moments, its celebrations and its secrets, the grittiness behind the glitz. There are stories of those who set the odds and those who take them, betting plunges planned more carefully than bank robberies, of tricky trainers, reckless jockeys and bold bookmakers. Tough and sometimes tender, dark and sometimes funny, Chance transcends the industry they call the sport of kings.
This book provides an overview of the state of the art in research on and treatment of gambling disorder. As a behavioral addiction, gambling disorder is of increasing relevance to the field of mental health. Research conducted in the last decade has yielded valuable new insights into the characteristics and etiology of gambling disorder, as well as effective treatment strategies. The different chapters of this book present detailed information on the general concept of addiction as applied to gambling, the clinical characteristics, epidemiology and comorbidities of gambling disorder, as well as typical cognitive distortions found in patients with gambling disorder. In addition, the book includes chapters discussing animal models and the genetic and neurobiological underpinnings of the disorder. Further, it is examining treatment options including pharmacological and psychological intervention methods, as well as innovative new treatment approaches. The book also discusses relevant similarities to and differences with substance-related disorders and other behavioral addictions. Lastly, it examines gambling behavior from a cultural perspective, considers possible prevention strategies and outlines future perspectives in the field.
In the bestselling tradition ofthe The Eighty-Dollar Champion, the propulsive, inspiring Cinderella story of Stymie, an unwanted Thoroughbred, and Hirsch Jacobs, the once dirt-poor trainer who bought the colt on the cheap and molded him into the most popular horse of his time and the richest racehorse the world had ever seen. In the wake of World War II, as turmoil and chaos were giving way to a spirit of optimism, Americans were looking for inspiration and role models showing that it was possible to start from the bottom and work your way up to the top-and they found it in Stymie, the failed racehorse plucked from the discard heap by trainer Hirsch Jacobs. Like Stymie, Jacobs was a commoner in "The Sport of Kings," a dirt-poor Brooklyn city slicker who forged an unlikely career as racing's winningest trainer by buying cheap, unsound nags and magically transforming them into winners. The $1,500 pittance Jacobs paid to claim Stymie became history's biggest bargain as the ultimate iron horse went on to run a whopping 131 races and win 25 stakes, becoming the first Thoroughbred ever to earn more than $900,000. The Cinderella champion nicknamed "The People's Horse" captivated the masses with his rousing charge-from-behind stretch runs, his gritty blue-collar work ethic, and his rags-to-riches success story. In a golden age when horse racing rivaled baseball and boxing as America's most popular pastime, he was every bit as inspiring a sports hero as Joe DiMaggio and Joe Louis. Taking readers on a crowd-pleasing ride with Stymie and Jacobs, Out of the Clouds -- the winner of the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award -- unwinds a real-life Horatio Alger tale of a dauntless team and its working-class fans who lived vicariously through the stouthearted little colt they embraced as their own.
