Review "Here is the poker novel I've been waiting years for someone to write. It doesn't just feel true. It is." --Brian Koppelman, co-writer of Rounders and Billions"It's like a sequel to Walker Percy's The Moviegoer--with poker as a stand-in for movies, and the protagonist now having married and become a father. I started reading, couldn't stop." - Tom Beller, author of J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist" What a ride! I have to confess sometimes the anxiety was so great I had to put the book down and build up my courage before I could pick it up again. But I was so glad I did and was bereft when the book ended--sad to be off this roller coaster ride through the world of live-or-die high-stakes poker and marriage."--Beverly Donofrio, author of Riding in Cars with Boys and Astonished. "Captures the underground New York poker scene down to the grime on the chips."-- Matt Matros, three-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner"Here is some of the tightest and most intense writing I've ever read about the psychology and terror of high stakes poker. 'The Only Way To Play It' is about love, and family, but it's also about luck. Peter Alson has had a lifetime of ups and downs around the poker table, and puts these moments to use in a novel that sings." - Matthew Klam, author of Who Is Rich? "The experience of reading The Only Way To Play It is like being in the middle of a high-voltage poker hand in which the pot keeps getting bigger and each new card seems to change everything--it's well deserving of a seat at the short-handed table of great poker novels." - Martin Harris, author of Poker and Pop Culture"This is the story that Rounders wished it could've been. In fact, it's among the best gambling novels we've ever read...Don't try turning these pages just before going to bed. The extraordinary tension of high stakes poker will have you tossing and turning for hours...We can't recommend The Only Way To Play It highly enough!" -- The Las Vegas Advisor"The Only Way To Play It raises the poker fiction stakes. Alson gives the reader much to consider regarding how the decisions we make affect our futures, and how much luck ultimately determines where we end up." -- PokerStars Blog "Excellent...Allows readers an inside glimpse into what it's like to be a [professional] poker player." -- Poker News Product Description Nate Fischer has been grinding out a living in New York's underground poker clubs. A decade ago, as a young painter, it seemed like the perfect way to pay the bills. Now he's hit a cold streak. His once-promising art career is in freefall. His wife's flirting with a dashing book editor. And his ex-con father's problems are becoming his own. On any given night, a bad beat could mean the collapse of his house-of-cards life.Just as it looks like he's about to turn it all around, his buddy is shot and killed right in front of him, and the cops padlock every poker club in the city. For Nate's wife, this is the last straw. She wants him out. Forced to move into his tiny painting studio, Nate struggles to rebuild from the ashes. Ironically, it is his deadbeat dad who shows him the way and is there for Nate when he puts everything on the line and takes the biggest gamble of his life.

The Only Way To Play It

Literature & Fiction

Alson, Peter

Genre Fiction

Arbitrary Press

Nate Fischer has been grinding out a living playing poker in the crucible of New York's underground gambling world. A decade ago, as a young painter, it seemed like the perfect way to pay the bills. Now he's hit a cold streak. He's running bad at the poker table. His once-promising art career is in freefall. His wife's having an affair with a dashing book editor. And increasingly, his ex-con father's problems are becoming his own. On any given night, a bad beat could mean the collapse of his house-of-cards life: pre-school tuition, rent, and the family he loves. Just as it looks like he's about to turn it all around, his buddy is shot and killed right in front of him, and the cops padlock every poker club in the city. For Nate's wife, this is the last straw. She decides she needs a break from the marriage, and Nate is forced to move into his tiny painting studio. Making matters worse, his deadbeat dad is evicted from his apartment, and Nate finds himself taking in the one guy who knows exactly where this kind of story ends - and the one least likely to help him figure a way out. Nate's struggle to rebuild his life will take him from the wild west of internet poker to the shady Russian enclaves of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, to the ultra-exclusive art auctions of elite Manhattan galleries, but in the end it is his father, revealing a side of himself that Nate has never seen, from whom Nate learns what it means to put everything on the line in the interest of love and loyalty. In this age of insecurity, Nate Fischer is a good-hearted man caught between an addictive passion for playing the odds versus a fierce desire to provide for his family and live life on his own terms. With themes that resonate-fathers and sons, the money chase, parenthood, and the fragility of marriage - The Only Way to Play It is a classic and painfully relevant tale of love, loss and redemption.

The Only Way To Play It: A Novel

Humor & Entertainment

Puzzles & Games

In Love of My Life, 94-year-old Barbara Mailer Wasserman, whose brother, Norman Mailer, became one of the 20th Century's most celebrated and controversial literary figures, shows that she's got writing chops of her own. These entertaining autobiographical tales range from an account of smuggling political prisoners out of Franco's Spain to an obsessive search for the truth about her mother's age to moving recollections about the many men in her life-all told in a voice that is by turns honest, whimsical, and acutely conscious of the good fortune that has accompanied her throughout.

Love of My Life: A Memoir

Wasserman, Barbara

Parenting & Relationships

As both observer and participant in these essays and stories, Peter Alson takes on fathers and sons, Wiffleball, bounty hunting, ice golf in Alaska, the World Series of Poker, and the Great American Novel. He goes road tripping down the bluest of highways, crashes a regular guy's wedding, and meditates, more darkly, on the kind of desperation that would drive someone to kill their spouse. Whether he's writing about hustlers, strivers, killers, conmen, storytellers, or simply the challenges of taking the road less traveled, Alson is always engaging, his prose sharp, clean, and self-assured.

Game Ball: and Other Essays

Biographies & Memoirs

True Crime

The Break is Steve Lansky's harrowing and comic account of his descent into madness after he changed the medication he took to keep his schizophrenia in check. Written with a poet's eye for detail and with great sensitivity and insight, it follows his quixotic quest to find love and literary success while trying to navigate a world that doesn't understand him.

The Break

Lansky, Steven P

The Break: a memoir

Lansky, Steven Paul

Religion & Spirituality

Dear Franklin: My Dad Just Had an Operation, What Do I Do?

Ryan, Jake

Children's Books

When her dad undergoes emergency open-heart surgery after collapsing at his gym, it's pretty much the worst thing that's ever happened to 11-year-old only child Hannah Brody. In response, she turns to a long-unopened diary that becomes the outlet for her deepest fears and darkest secrets. To her surprise, she finds that not only is she not alone, but that support can come from the most unexpected places. Funny, richly textured, and moving, Dear Franklin is a story of resilience in the face of near tragedy, an inspiring tale for middle-graders and others on how to cope when confronted with life's unexpected twists and turns.\n“Jake Ryan’s engaging 11-year-old narrator, Hannah B, charms and delights as she struggles to make sense of her suddenly precarious world. Her spot-on observations and humor will pull you into her story on the first page and keep you reading to the end. Highly recommended for everyone in the family, kids and grownups alike.” —William J. Harrigan, Author of Augie Sweetwater and the Dolphin’s Tale\n“Realistic, heartfelt, vulnerable, and inspiring. Readers will find comfort and humor in the way 11-year-old Hannah Brody copes with her father’s scary health crisis. Her always-entertaining diary entries will serve as reminders that you are never alone in your big feelings.” --Laura Anne Bird, author of Crossing the Pressure Line\n"Hannah B’s daily journal tells us how she tries to make sense of a world that seems to be falling apart—her best friend moved, she’s assigned to do a school project with a boy she can’t stand, and nobody will give her straight answers when her father collapses at the gym. In Dear Diary Franklin, Ryan goes beyond looking at the usual challenges of being a kid who doesn’t quite fit in at school to educate about recovery from major heart surgery, leaving the reader with a satisfying ending." 
--Frances Schoonmaker, award-winning author of The Last Crystal Trilogy

"Those were just the times." That's how Morris "Little" Nickerson has always chosen to describe the incongruities of his childhood in the segregated south. But when a call from his older sister prompts Little, who is now in his seventies, to return to his hometown of LaSalle, Georgia, he finds himself having to reexamine the childhood he's kept encased in glass all these years. As he tries to make sense of the events of one particularly eventful summer, Little tells of Reverend Robert McAllister, the father of his best friend, who speaks the high-flown language of social change but preaches to an all-white congregation; he relates his love for the Black family maid, who is like a second mother to him but is made to sit in the back of his family's car; he describes seeing familiar faces amongst the civil rights' marchers who descend on the LaSalle town square, though he has been told that their protests are the work of outside agitators. Returning to a town he hasn't seen in years, Little is forced to confront the ways in which his best friend, his father, and his fragile, often infirm, mother remain mysterious to him, and to admit that he cannot reconcile the nostalgia he feels for his naïve boyhood with the truth an old man can no longer deny.

Never

Johnson, Joel F

16-year-old Grace Green has spent her entire life in the extreme and insular world of a religious cult. When the remote compound goes up in flames during an FBI raid, nearly all of her fellow cult members, including the charismatic leader and Grace's older sister, are killed. The few survivors, including Grace and her best friend, Sami, are dispersed to homes and facilities aro"und the country. Grace is taken to New Jersey to live with an uncle and cousin she's never met. Brainwashed into hating all "disbelievers," Grace plots her escape, but her sessions with a skillful therapist reveal cracks in her rigid belief system, especially in regard to Sami, and she finds herself increasingly torn between her loyalty to her former "family" and the scary but life-affirming feelings that her new world has sparked.

Far From Here

Teen & Young Adult

Alson, Eden

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Books by Arbitrary Press

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Arbitrary Press publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Only Way To Play It

The Only Way To Play It: A Novel

Love of My Life: A Memoir

Game Ball: and Other Essays

The Break

The Break: a memoir

Dear Franklin: My Dad Just Had an Operation, What Do I Do?

Dear Franklin: My Dad Just Had an Operation, What Do I Do?

Never

Far From Here