Download or read book The Significant Seven written by John McEvoy and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2010-03-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seven lifelong friends and racing fans from their student days at the University of Wisconsin strike it lucky at Saratoga Race Track when they combine to win a plus million dollar Pick Six. They subsequently use some of those profits to buy race horses, one of which, The Badger Express, turns out to be a sensational runner, stallion, and money maker. Seven years later, the men become targets of a professional assassin, an ex-Navy SEAL and Iraq private security guard named Orth. They begin dying, one by one. Jack Doyle returns to the race track, volunteering to aid FBI agents in a search for criminals fixing races. Doyle then becomes involved in protecting Rene Rison, the favored daughter of the Significant Seven's leader Arnie Rison. Jack Doyle, as always irreverent, observant, opinionated, sometimes mistaken but always persistent, eventually manages to find answers to the questions of who is fixing the races and who is having members of the Significant Seven killed off.

Download or read book Shalimar the Clown written by Salman Rushdie and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shalimar the Clown is a masterpiece from one of our greatest writers, a dazzling novel that brings together the fiercest passions of the heart and the gravest conflicts of our time into an astonishingly powerful, all-encompassing story. Max Ophuls’ memorable life ends violently in Los Angeles in 1993 when he is murdered by his Muslim driver Noman Sher Noman, also known as Shalimar the Clown. At first the crime seems to be politically motivated—Ophuls was previously ambassador to India, and later US counterterrorism chief—but it is much more. Ophuls is a giant, an architect of the modern world: a Resistance hero and best-selling author, brilliant economist and clandestine US intelligence official. But it is as Ambassador to India that the seeds of his demise are planted, thanks to another of his great roles—irresistible lover. Visiting the Kashmiri village of Pachigam, Ophuls lures an impossibly beautiful dancer, the ambitious (and willing) Boonyi Kaul, away from her husband, and installs her as his mistress in Delhi. But their affair cannot be kept secret, and when Boonyi returns home, disgraced and obese, it seems that all she has waiting for her is the inevitable revenge of her husband: Noman Sher Noman, Shalimar the Clown. He was an acrobat and tightrope walker in their village’s traditional theatrical troupe; but soon Shalimar is trained as a militant in Kashmir’s increasingly brutal insurrection, and eventually becomes a terrorist with a global remit and a deeply personal mission of vengeance. In this stunningly rich book everything is connected, and everyone is a part of everyone else. A powerful love story, intensely political and historically informed, Shalimar the Clown is also profoundly human, an involving story of people’s lives, desires and crises, as well as—in typical Rushdie fashion—a magical tale where the dead speak and the future can be foreseen.

Download or read book Brotherly Love written by Pete Dexter and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the City of Brotherly Love, a car skids off the ice and ignites a chain of events that changes everything for eight-year-old Peter Flood. Peter’s father is a powerful man, a union boss with mob connections, but all the power in the world is useless to a grieving son. Raised by his uncle, Peter tries to distance himself from the casual brutality of the family business, gravitating instead toward a small South Philly gym. Peter’s cousin Michael—his “brother”—moves in another direction: into small-time intimidation and the trappings of a union prince. Neither, however, can outrun the logic of violence as they’re dragged into a world of bad blood and a chilling cycle of betrayal and retribution. Praise for Brotherly Love “A first-rate novel and a masterly evocation of that undercivilized and unfree America . . . The grace and confidence of [Pete Dexter’s] prose conveys absolute authenticity.”—The New York Times Book Review “Enviably artful work—carefully wrought, canny in its insights, sly in its presentation, sneaky in its revelations.”—Chicago Tribune “Extraordinarily poignant . . . Brotherly Love is all bulletproof prose and flinty-eyed bravissimo. . . . But the quieter, sadder aspects of the novel are its strongest points.”—The Boston Globe “Tautly and often exquisitely written.”—Los Angeles Times

Download or read book Something for Nothing written by David Anthony and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: His extravagant suburban lifestyle deteriorating along with his small-aircraft business in the face of the 1970s oil crisis, Martin Anderson attempts to clear his mounting debts by using his planes for drug runs to Mexico only to find himself wrongly implicated in a double murder. Original. A first novel.

Download or read book The Legendary Cowboy Conman written by Thomas Donily and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2017-11-12 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This novel has all the ingredients of three classics: The Hustler starring Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman The Colour of Money starring Tom Cruise and Paul Newman The Sting starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman The Cowboy Conman executes in real live the highest form of manipulation.

Download or read book The Big Horse written by Joe McGinniss and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The big horse," in racing vernacular, is the animal that brings fame and fortune to a stable. He's the heavyweight champion, the All-American quarterback, the four-legged Michael Jordan of the barn. Seabiscuit was once Tom Smith's "big horse." A generation ago, Secretariat was Lucien Lauren's. In 2003, Funny Cide was Barclay Tagg's. In sixty years as a trainer, P. G. Johnson had never had one -- until Volponi. P. G. Johnson was a blue-collar wizard, a hardscrabble tough guy who had come east from Chicago, determined to make his mark on New York. And he did. He became leading trainer at all three New York tracks -- Saratoga, Belmont, and Aqueduct -- as well as at Florida's Tropical Park. And he did it without ever winning a Triple Crown or Breeders' Cup event, or having "the big horse." "I never knew how to kiss rich people's asses, and I got too old to learn. If no owner was going to give me a big horse, I figured I'd have to find one myself," he said. He did that, in his seventies, buying a mare for $8,000, breeding her to a $20,000 stallion, and in 1998 producing Volponi, the horse that would change his life. In October 2002, weakened by surgery and radiation treatment for cancer, P. G. watched Volponi -- the longest shot in the field at 43 to 1 -- bring home more than $2 million by winning the Breeders' Cup Classic, the richest race in America. The following summer at Saratoga, McGinniss -- journalist, investigative reporter, and horse racing obsessive -- began showing up, more Tuesdays with Morrie than Guys and Dolls, at P. G.'s barn in the predawn hours to listen to the inside racing stories and lore P. G. had gathered. McGinniss came to appreciate that Johnson was not only a stellar horseman but an American original whose wit and wisdom carried far beyond the confines of the racetrack. As for Volponi, the big horse had given P. G. the perfect Disney ending with the Breeders' Cup victory, and, indeed, Disney soon bought film rights to P. G.'s life story. "He'll be even better next year," P. G. had said, but by the time McGinniss got to Saratoga, Volponi had not won a race in nine months. His faith undiminished, P. G. continued to race Volponi against the best, at Saratoga and beyond, until in the end it came down to the 2003 Breeders' Cup Classic in Santa Anita, a race only one horse in history had ever won twice. As fires burned in the Southern California hills, Volponi -- with Funny Cide's jockey, Jose Santos, in the saddle -- ran the last race of his life. This book is about what happened that day, about what came after, and about much of what had come before. It's the most exciting, rewarding, and heartwarming story about the world of horse racing that you'll ever read, by one of America's finest writers, at the top of his form.

Download or read book The Mumper written by Mark Baxter and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2011-10-27 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seven drinking buddies decide to buy a racehorse and embark on the journey of a lifetime in the book that inspired the film Outside Bet. It's 1985 - Thatcher is in power, Sade is on the radio and the print workers have gone on strike. A motley rabble of seven firm friends: Thimble, Gudger, O'Sh, Fred the Shoe, Dave, Alfie and Bax meet every Sunday in their favourite South London boozer for banter of the highest order and a lot of taking the mick. Then, out of the blue, one of their number receives some news which knocks him and his merry band for six. Reeling from this shock and confused about how to deal with it, the boys meet and rally in standard fashion, in the Dutchman with a few light ales and an aim to set the world to rights. One day an unknown character approaches the crew and asks them a most intriguing question...'Does anyone here want to buy a racehorse?!' From that simple but surreal question unfolds the story of seven likely lads who embark on a unique journey in the name of their mate, and what happens when they just decide to go the whole bifta.

Download or read book Hollow written by Brian Catling and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed author of the Vorrh Trilogy comes an epic odyssey following a group of mercenaries hired to escort a divine oracle on a long journey amidst a war between the living and the dead. Sheltering beneath Das Kagel, the cloud-scraping structure rumored to be the Tower of Babel, the sacred Monastery of the Eastern Gate descends into bedlam. Their ancient oracle, Quite Testiyont--whose prophesies helped protect the church--has died, leaving the monks vulnerable to the war raging between the living and the dead. Tasked by the High Church to deliver a new oracle, Barry Follett and his group of hired mercenaries are forced to confront wicked giants and dangerous sirens on their mission, keeping the divine creature alive by feeding it marrow and confessing their darkest sins. But as Follett and his men carve their way through the treacherous landscape, the world around them spirals deeper into chaos. Dominic, a young monk who has mysteriously lost his voice, makes a pilgrimage to see surreal paintings, believing they reveal the empire's fate; a local woman called Mad Meg hopes to free and vindicate her jailed son and becomes the leader of the most unexpected revolution; and the abbott of the monastery, influential as he is, seeks to gain even more power in this world and the next. Rich with action and fantastic creatures, Hollow ushers the reader through a world of ruin where holy secrets are unearthed, art mirrors life through a glass darkly, and death looms over everything. It is B. Catling's most accomplished and gripping tale yet. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL

Download or read book The F King Book written by Allan Wood and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2006-10-03 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These writings are a celebration of the evolution of our habitat and its inhabitants from time immemorial to present day. Together with our singular appreciation for the most spoken word of all time, a word that conveys different emotions, has multiple meanings, a word that is never used out of context, always grammatically correct, spans cultural, geographical, political and national barriers, brings all communications to a level playing field. This book is dedicated to everyone who is misguided enough to believe the world has evolved au natural. Hopefully, once reading this literary milestone you will come to realise this worlds original inhabitants were put here by some Universal Interplanetary Council Correctional Department to facilitate their rehabilitation, all of these early settlers were undoubtedly mentally and/or criminally insane and have unwittingly spawned what we know today as a seething mass of institutionalised and certifiable nutters of which you are undoubtedly one.

Download or read book The Great and the Good written by John Giles and published by Hachette Books Ireland. This book was released on 2012-10-18 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Great and the Good, Ireland's leading football pundit and legend of the game John Giles looks back on more than fifty years of football, at developments in the game from the post-War period to the present day, the great players who drove it forward, the visionary managers and their teams, and the age-old question of what makes a player good and what makes one great. From his earliest days, John Giles can recall pondering the subject. 'You'd hear about certain 'great' players, such as Stanley Matthews, but no one would ever explain why they were great. And it's a thing that has always frustrated me: trying to define what makes a player great, and what separates the great from the good.' Now the man himself brings us the answers and celebrates the great ones, from Stanley Matthews, Tom Finney, Dave Mackay, John Charles, Johnny Haynes and Jimmy Greaves to Pele, Franz Beckenbauer, John Robertson, Diego Maradona, Marco van Basten, Lionel Messi, Paul Scholes and many more. It will include a section on Irish players including detailed analysis of such greats as Roy Keane, Liam Brady and Paul McGrath. And, finally, Giles names the player he considers the greatest of them all.

Download or read book Stay Safe written by Antony Vitale and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2012-10 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book covers a period in time when the author was in law enforcement. It tells of his time on the streets and what he encountered from day to day: the deaths, shootings, stabbings, robberies, and police corruption. The book describes the effects all of this had on the author's personal and professional life. The book is very graphic as to the way it describes the incidents throughout. The names have been changed as to not identify and persons living or deceased.

Download or read book Fast written by Stephen F. Cea and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2018-02-17 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Its a fact: no mans story begins or ends with his birth and eventual death. Thats just the span of a lifetime. A mans story begins with the commingled influences of the past and ends with the effects of his existence on the future. While sitting in his prison cell contemplating life, a man considers the events that led him astray. Those events span a forty-year period, starting with early childhood into the present day. In a way, this mans story is a dark coming of age narrative that may or may not have a happy ending. Fast is a modern interpretation of Faust, except that instead of the hoofed personification of evil, it is modern society itself that beguiles the protagonist. People react to their particular realities in a manner characterized by Sartre as Being-in-Itself because they dont have time to reflect on their decisions, instead of by Being-for-Itself, which requires a conscious evaluation before making those determinations. In other words, it can be a moments hesitation that leads to the decimation of our souls. Which path would you choose: damnation or salvation? What if you unknowingly already made your choice years ago?

Download or read book Horse People written by Michael J. Rosen and published by Artisan Books. This book was released on 2002-04-01 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Deeply I sat, fixed to the slap, slap, slap of her trot, and the counterpoint thud-plod, thud-plod of her heart, enchanted by a soft percussion I felt part of, floating above the syncopated rhythm like a melody." --Diane Ackerman, recalling her beloved Appaloosa mare Horses have inspired devotion, awe, and love in their human companions for millennia; in Horse People more than forty acclaimed writers and artists share their own passion for these magical, mythical animals. Horse People includes deeply moving reminiscences and stories as varied as Jane Smiley's memories of her return to riding and Rita Mae Brown's straight-from-the-horse's-mouth tale "told" by her horse, Peggy Sue Brown. A wide range of artistic mediums are represented as well: Painter Jamie Wyeth evokes dreamlike memories of a rural past; photographer John Derryberry captures the untamed beauty of wild stallions in Kashmir. Read this moving anthology and "you too will yearn to connect--or reconnect--with horses" (Town & Country).

Download or read book Twelve Grand written by Jonathan Rendall and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-01-21 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Hello, is that Jonathan Rendall?' 'Speaking.' 'My name's Rachel. I'm calling from Yellow Jersey Press and I have a proposal for you. I'm looking for someone to give £12,000 to but the catch is they have to spend it all on gambling - horses, the dogs, casinos, boxing, golf, footie, that sort of thing - and then write a book about it. Any profits made are entirely that person's but if they lose it all I still want my book. It's high risk but without wanting to assume too much, I've heard a bit about you and somehow I thought it may appeal. Think about it - you'd have the opportunity to lay some serious bets offering serious returns, you could play hard ball in poker games for once, even go to Vegas and, as I said, those winnings are yours to blow in whatever way you wish'. 'When do I start?

Download or read book Who Ate All The Pies The Life and Times of Mick Quinn written by Mick Quinn and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-12-31 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mick Quinn, the boy from a Liverpool council estate dubbed 'Little Beirut', always loved his birds, booze and betting. They said Mick had a sixth sense for great accuracy in his playing days - he could find a party from any range. Quinn says he only put £50 on each horse race - but liked to stay in the bookies for twenty races a day! Sentenced in 1987 to three weeks in prison for twice driving whilst banned, Mick's been accused of punching Peter Schmeichel on the football pitch and John Fashanu off it. On retirement, though, Quinn switched to horse racing, the Sport of Kings, but controversy led the blue bloods of racing to hang the scouse oik out to dry and he was suspended from training for two and a half years. Who Ate All The Pies? is the funniest and most honest football book you'll read for a long, long time.

Download or read book Lower Club written by Jim Ventura and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2011-08-30 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People. Who they are, who they were... what they've become. A bunch of guys sitting around a table at the race track - but who are these guys? They hang out together every day for years... but do they know each other? Does anyone really know anyone else? Lower Club is a story about guys just like the ones you hang out with... and one amazing day at the track. A peek inside the horse race industry, and the thrills and chills of the game. Come along for the ride!

Download or read book My Favorite Mistake written by Courtney McCaskill and published by Hazel Grove Books. This book was released on 2024-04-12 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sixteen years ago, lady’s maid Fanny Price believed in love at first sight. But that was before she met handsome horse trainer Nick Cradduck at a village fair. Nick swept her off her feet, then shattered her heart the very next day. Fanny crossed all of England, finding a new post with the Astley family, just so she would never have to see that filthy blackguard again. But Nick isn’t going down without a fight. He tracks Fanny down at the Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling and Wake, of all places, on a bright, sunny spring morning not so different from the day they met. Now Fanny must decide if she’ll send Nick packing… or take a second chance on the only man who’s ever felt like her match. My Favorite Mistake is a steamy novella that is part of the Astley Chronicles series. It features Fanny Price, Lady Caroline Astley’s intrepid lady’s maid, and can be read at any point after Book 1.