The Poker Bride

Download or read book The Poker Bride written by Christopher Corbett and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2011-02-08 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This true story of a concubine and the Gold Rush years “delves deep into the soul of the real old west” (Erik Larson). “Once the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill launched our ‘national madness,’ the population of California exploded. Tens of thousands of Chinese, lured by tales of a ‘golden mountain,’ took passage across the Pacific. Among this massive influx were many young concubines who were expected to serve in the brothels sprouting up near the goldfields. One of them adopted the name of Polly Bemis, after an Idaho saloonkeeper, Charlie Bemis, won her in a poker game and married her. For decades the couple lived on an isolated, self-sufficient farm near the Salmon River in central Idaho. After her husband’s death, Polly came down to a nearby town and gradually spoke of her experiences. Journalist Christopher Corbett movingly recounts Polly’s story, integrating Polly’s personal history into the broader picture of the history of the mass immigration of Chinese. As both a personal and social history, this is an admirable book.” —Booklist “A gorgeously written and brilliantly researched saga of America during the mad flush of its biggest Gold Rush. Christopher Corbett’s genius is to anchor his larger story of Chinese immigration around a poor concubine named Polly. A tremendous achievement.” —Douglas Brinkley “Uses Bemis’s story as a platform for a larger discussion about the hardships of the Chinese experience in the American West.” —The Washington Post

Download or read book The Bride Stripped Bare written by Nikki Gemmell and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-05-29 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE RUNAWAY INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER “The Bride Stripped Bare shows us the inside–out of marriage, infidelity, obsession and taxi drivers (I may never take a cab ride in London again). . . . Few books can be both dark and light. This one dances on the edge, and sometimes crosses it, with much satisfaction to be had on either side.”— Valerie Frankel, author of The Accidental Virgin An explosive novel of sex, secrecy, and escape. A woman disappears. Her car lies abandoned on a remote bluff; no body is found. Known by her family and friends as quiet and self-contained, she has left behind an incendiary diary chronicling a disturbing journey of sexual awakening. The diary opens on her honeymoon in Morocco: she believes herself to be happy—or happy enough, anyway. Swiftly, this security masquerading as love fractures in an act of massive betrayal, only to propel her into a world of desire and fantasy and recklessness. In need of guidance, she finds an unlikely heroine in the anonymous author of a dusty, rare manuscript. Written by a woman in the 1600s, it is a cry from the heart for women to live and love freely. Emboldened, she allows herself to discover the intoxicating power of knowing what she wants and how to get it. The question is, how long can her soul sustain a perilous double life? Coolly impassioned, Bride Stripped Bare tells shocking truths about love and sex. Couched in a deceptively simple style, its gorgeous, incantatory rhythms will make you question whether it is ever entirely possible to know another person.

Download or read book The Bride Next Door written by Winnie Griggs and published by HarperCollins Australia. This book was released on 2013-06-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After years of wandering, Daisy Johnson hopes to settle in Turnabout, Texas, open a restaurant, perhaps find a husband. Of course, she'd envisioned a man who actually likes her. Not someone who offers a marriage of convenience to avoid scandal. Turnabout is just a temporary stop for newspaper reporter Everett Fulton. Thanks to one pesky connecting door and a local gossip, he's suddenly married, but his dreams of leaving haven't changed. What Daisy wants–home, family, tenderness–he can't provide. Yet big–city plans are starting to pale beside small–town warmth.

Download or read book Orphans Preferred written by Christopher Corbett and published by Crown. This book was released on 2004-09-14 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “WANTED. YOUNG, SKINNY, WIRY FELLOWS. NOT OVER 18. MUST BE EXPERT RIDERS. WILLING TO RISK DEATH DAILY. ORPHANS PREFERRED.” —California newspaper help-wanted ad, 1860 The Pony Express is one of the most celebrated and enduring chapters in the history of the United States, a story of the all-American traits of bravery, bravado, and entrepreneurial risk that are part of the very fabric of the Old West. No image of the American West in the mid-1800s is more familiar, more beloved, and more powerful than that of the lone rider galloping the mail across hostile Indian territory. No image is more revered. And none is less understood. Orphans Preferred is both a revisionist history of this magnificent and ill-fated adventure and an entertaining look at the often larger-than-life individuals who created and perpetuated the myth of “the Pony,” as it is known along the Pony Express trail that runs from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. The Pony Express is a story that exists in the annals of Americana where fact and fable collide, a story as heroic as the journey of Lewis and Clark, as complex and revealing as the legacy of Custer’s Last Stand, and as muddled and freighted with yarns as Paul Revere’s midnight ride. Orphans Preferred is a fresh and exuberant reexamination of this great American story.

Download or read book Lion's Bride written by Iris Johansen and published by Bantam. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sizzling novel of passion, peril, and searing sensuality from “a master among master storytellers” (Affaire de Coeur)—a magical weaver of spellbinding tales, enticing characters, and unforgettable romance. The darkly handsome warrior found her in the hot desert night, the last survivor of a caravan devastated by a brutal attack. But Thea could hardly have found a less likely savior. Brooding and powerful, the infamous Lord Ware felt no need to rescue a total stranger, but Thea’s striking beauty and fighting spirit moved him. So the knight in tarnished armor carried her away to his secret stronghold at Dundragon, where she would become his prisoner, his tormentor, his lover . . . and the one weapon his deadly enemy could use to destroy him.

Download or read book Positively Fifth Street written by James McManus and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rough sex, black magic, murder, and the science-and eros-of gambling meet in the ultimate book about Las Vegas James McManus was sent to Las Vegas by Harper's to cover the World Series of Poker in 2000, especially the mushrooming progress of women in the $23 million event, and the murder of Ted Binion, the tournament's prodigal host, purportedly done in by a stripper and her boyfriend with a technique so outré it took a Manhattan pathologist to identify it. Whether a jury would convict the attractive young couple was another story altogether. McManus risks his entire Harper's advance in a long-shot attempt to play in the tournament himself. Only with actual table experience, he tells his skeptical wife, can he capture the hair-raising brand of poker that determines the world champion. The heart of the book is his deliciously suspenseful account of the tournament itself-the players, the hand-to-hand combat, and his own unlikely progress in it. Written in the tradition of The Gambler and The Biggest Game in Town, Positively Fifth Street is a high-stakes adventure, a penetrating study of America's card game, and a terrifying but often hilarious account of one man's effort to understand what Edward O. Wilson has called "Pleistocene exigencies"-the eros and logistics of our primary competitive instincts.

Download or read book Vacationland written by Christopher Corbett and published by Viking Adult. This book was released on 1986 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catching the wacky spirit of "making it in Maine", we follow the adventures of Chick Devine and his collection of downeast desperados.