The Cat Who Brought Down The House by Lilian Jackson Braun
There's a lot going on in Pickax these days - a new film club has been founded, Koko the Siamese cat is making his stage debut in a musical revue to benefit animal rescue and five Amazon parrots have been abducted. To say nothing of a suspicious compulsive gambler lurking in the background.
Added by: ninasimeo | Karma: 4370.39 | Fiction literature | 17 April 2010
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The Gambler brilliantly captures the strangely powerful compulsion to bet that Dostoevsky, himself a compulsive gambler, knew so well. The hero rides an emotional roller coaster between exhilaration and despair, and secondary characters such as the Grandmother, who throws much of her fortune away at the gaming tables, are unforgettable.
'Your unquestioning obedience. You will be my man.' Such is Manfred's demand when he offers Rod Ironsides the general managership of the Sonder Ditch gold mine.
For Rod, ambitious and hard-living but totally gripped by the life of the mine, it is the chance of a lifetime. Manfred Steyner is neurotic and ruthless, a compulsive gambler who treats people as counters in a private game and his beautiful, frustrated wife Terry as a social prop and source of cash.
