Poker Nation: A High-Stakes, Low-Life Adventure into the Heart of a Gambling Country

Paperback: 288 pages

Publisher: Perennial; 1st edition (February 4, 2003)

The Biggest Game in Town

Paperback: 192 pages

Publisher: Chronicle Books; (March 2002)

Girls' Poker Night: A Novel of High Stakes

Paperback: 240 pages

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; (February 11, 2003)

Amazon.com Review:
Ruby Capote, the narrator of Girls' Poker Night, is your quintessential New York cynic. This persona serves her just fine in her job as a humor columnist; she's unafraid to write the most humiliating details about herself or her friends, because she truly doesn't care. But over the course of a year or so of Wednesday night poker parties with her pals, Ruby is forced to face her past--especially her sorrow over her father, who committed suicide after he left Ruby's mother. Meanwhile, Ruby comes to terms with her budding feelings for Michael, the editor of her newspaper, who, in a neat twist, turns out to be estranged from his only child (shades of Ruby's lost father). Davis, a former writer for The Late Show, does a fine job of maintaining Ruby's sharp humor while leading her through a minefield of emotional discovery.

Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker

Paperback: 416 pages

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux; 1st edition (April 2003)

Amazon.com Review:

In 2000, novelist and poet James McManus was sent to Las Vegas, innocently enough, by Harper's magazine to write a story about the World Series of Poker held annually at Binion's Horseshoe. But then, as so often happens on trips to Sin City, something kind of ... happened. Rather than becoming an objective report, McManus's article evolved into a memoir as he put his entire advance on the line, got lucky with his cards and won a spot in the competition, and came much closer than anyone expected to winning the darn thing. The result, Positively Fifth Street, is just as dazzling, exciting, and disturbing as Vegas itself.