The Rollercoaster of Gambling: 12 Books
Tales of Chance, Deception, Fortune, and Ruin from Victorian, Russian, and American ClassicsBy Edward Moore, G. Frank Lydston, Bret Harte, William Le Queux, Clarence Louis Cullen, Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, Ralph Nevill, James Harold Romain, Charles Dickens, Harry Harrison, Burt L. Standish
Length83h 21m
About this audiobook
The Rollercoaster of Gambling: 12 Books gathers twelve works in which wagering becomes a lens for chance, desire, deception, and social aspiration. Moving among tales, sketches, sensation fiction, adventure, satire, and moral reflection, the volume ranges from card tables shadowed by obsession to racetracks, confidence games, and speculative schemes. Its strongest effects arise from this formal variety: gambling appears at once as entertainment, vice, economic metaphor, and an unsettling test of character. The contributors bring together markedly different literary worlds. Canonical nineteenth-century realism and Romantic psychological intensity meet frontier humor, popular crime and espionage writing, sporting fiction, and later imaginative adventure. Writers associated with Russian, British, and American traditions place gambling within distinct social settings—aristocratic salons, urban streets, imperial networks, and volatile frontier cultures—while collectively tracing the modern fascination with risk. Their varied idioms illuminate how games of chance expose class ambition, masculinity, credulity, criminality, and the fragile boundary between calculation and fate. This collection is especially rewarding for readers seeking a comparative view of gambling in literature. Within one volume, it offers educational access to changing genres and national traditions, while inviting attention to recurring images of luck, loss, and self-invention. Read together, these twelve books create a rich dialogue between psychological drama, social critique, and popular storytelling.
Audiobook details
GenreLiterary Classics, General Fiction
Length83 hrs 21 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateMar 4, 2025
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1The Gamester
2The Gamester (1753)
3PROLOGUE.
4EPILOGUE.
5Gambling; or, Fortuna, her temple and shrine
Show all chaptersShow less
6PREFACE.
7Introduction.
8The Worship of Fortuna.
9What is Truth? or, The Philosopher’s Stone.
10The Destinies; or, The Reign of Law.
11Legislative Exorcism; or, The Belief in Word-Magic.
12“The King is Dead—Long Live the King.”
13If Sinners Entice Thee
14If Sinners Entice Thee
15"If Sinners Entice Thee" (pt. 1)
16"If Sinners Entice Thee" (pt. 2)
17"If Sinners Entice Thee" (pt. 3)
18"If Sinners Entice Thee" (pt. 4)
19Whatsoever a Man Soweth
20Whatsoever a Man Soweth
21"Whatsoever a Man Soweth" (pt. 1)
22"Whatsoever a Man Soweth" (pt. 2)
23"Whatsoever a Man Soweth" (pt. 3)
24"Whatsoever a Man Soweth" (pt. 4)
25Nell and Her Grandfather, Told from Charles Dickens's "The Old Curiosity Shop"
26The Queen Of Spades
27By Alexander Sergeievitch Poushkin
28Light Come, Light Go: Gambling—Gamesters—Wagers—The Turf
29Footnote
30Footnote
31Footnote
32Footnote
33Footnote (pt. 1)
34Footnote (pt. 2)
35Footnote (pt. 3)
36Poker Jim, Gentleman, and Other Tales and Sketches
37PREFACE
38POKER JIM, GENTLEMAN
39TOMMY THE OUTCAST
40JOHNNY A STORY OF THE PHILIPPINES
41MY FRIEND THE UNDERTAKER
42A GRIM MEMENTO
43A WISE CHILD
44LEAVES FROM A SUICIDE’S DIARY
45CHIQUITA
46A DEAD IDEAL A ROMANCE OF THE DISSECTING ROOM
47A MATTER OF PROFESSIONAL SECRECY
48A LEGEND OF THE YOSEMITE THE LOVE OF TIS-SA-ACK AND TU-TOCH-A-NU-LAH
49A GREAT CITY’S SHAME
50Taking Chances
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