The Grifters

Author: Jim Thompson
Publisher: Mulholland Books
ISBN: 0316195936
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 181

Book Description
Jim Thompson's classic The Grifters is one of the best novels ever written about the art of the con, an ingeniously crafted story of deception and betrayal that was the basis for the critically acclaimed film by Stephen Frears and Martin Scorcese. To his friends, to his coworkers, and even to his mistress Moira, Roy Dillon is an honest hardworking salesman. He lives in a cheap hotel just within his pay bracket. He goes to work every day. He has hundreds of friends and associates who could attest to his good character. Yet, hidden behind three gaudy clown paintings in Roy's pallid hotel room, sits fifty-two thousand dollars — the money Roy makes from his short cons, his "grifting." For years, Roy has effortlessly maintained control over his house-of-cards life — until the simplest con goes wrong, and he finds himself critically injured and at the mercy of the most dangerous woman he ever met: his own mother.

The Grifter's Club

Author: Sarah Blaskey
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541756967
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
An astonishing look inside the gilded gates of Mar-a-Lago, the palatial resort where President Trump conducts government business with little regard for ethics, security, or even the law. Donald Trump's opulent Palm Beach club Mar-a-Lago has thrummed with scandal since the earliest days of his presidency. Long known for its famous and wealthy clientele, the resort's guest list soon started filling with political operatives and power-seekers. Meanwhile, as Trump re-branded Mar-a-Lago "the Winter White House" and began spending weekends there, state business spilled out into full view of the club's members, and vast sums of taxpayer money and political donations began flowing into its coffers, and into the pockets of the president. The Grifter's Club is a breakthrough account of the impropriety, intrigue, and absurdity that has been on display in the place where the president is at his most relaxed. In these pages, a team of prizewinning Miami Herald journalists reveal the activities and motivations of the strange array of charlatans and tycoons who populate its halls. Some peddle influence, some seek inside information, and some just want to soak up the feeling of unfettered access to the world's most powerful leaders. With the drama of an expose and the edgy humor of a Carl Hiaasen novel, The Grifter's Club takes you behind the velvet ropes of this exclusive club and into its bizarre world of extravagance and scandal.

They Call Them Grifters

Author: Alice McQuillan
Publisher: Onyx
ISBN: 9780451409072
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Book Description
When an 82-year-old Manhattan heiress disappeared, an investigation led to the arrest of Sante and Kenneth Kimes, a mother and son team who had lived in a world of riches and privilege. As they face trial, accused of a shocking array of crimes, including murder, an award-winning police reporter provides this gripping account of a case that continues to shock the nation. of photos.

Rogues

Author: Patrick Radden Keefe
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385548524
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the award-winning author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing—and one of the most decorated journalists of our time—twelve enthralling true stories of skulduggery and intrigue "An excellent collection of Keefe's detective work, and a fine introduction to his illuminating writing." —NPR “Fast-paced...Keefe is a virtuoso storyteller." —The Washington Post Patrick Radden Keefe has garnered prizes ranging from the National Magazine Award to the Orwell Prize to the National Book Critics Circle Award for his meticulously-reported, hypnotically-engaging work on the many ways people behave badly. Rogues brings together a dozen of his most celebrated articles from The New Yorker. As Keefe says in his preface “They reflect on some of my abiding preoccupations: crime and corruption, secrets and lies, the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds, the bonds of family, the power of denial.” Keefe brilliantly explores the intricacies of forging $150,000 vintage wines, examines whether a whistleblower who dared to expose money laundering at a Swiss bank is a hero or a fabulist, spends time in Vietnam with Anthony Bourdain, chronicles the quest to bring down a cheerful international black market arms merchant, and profiles a passionate death penalty attorney who represents the “worst of the worst,” among other bravura works of literary journalism. The appearance of his byline in The New Yorker is always an event, and collected here for the first time readers can see his work forms an always enthralling but deeply human portrait of criminals and rascals, as well as those who stand up against them.

Matchstick Men

Author: Eric Garcia
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0307488039
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • A novel about grifters with issues, by the acclaimed cult author of Anonymous Rex and Casual Rex Roy and Frankie are matchstick men—con artists. Partners in elegant crimes for years, they know each other like brothers and have perfected the rules of the game. Roy is the careful one, saves every penny. Frankie is the adventurous one, hungry for a big score. He wants Roy to join him in running a tricky game, but Roy is distracted by the discovery that he is the father of a punky teenage daughter from a brief marriage that ended years ago. The kid wants to get to know her father. She also wants to learn the family business. Novelist Eric Garcia takes readers into the fast and funny world of grifters with issues. Matchstick Men is a dazzling literary con game that will keep readers guessing until the last page.

Confident Women

Author: Tori Telfer
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062956043
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 325

Book Description
A thoroughly entertaining and darkly humorous roundup of history’s notorious but often forgotten female con artists and their bold, outrageous scams—by the acclaimed author of Lady Killers. From Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delvey to Frank Abagnale and Charles Ponzi, audacious scams and charismatic scammers continue to intrigue us as a culture. As Tori Telfer reveals in Confident Women, the art of the con has a long and venerable tradition, and its female practitioners are some of the best—or worst. In the 1700s in Paris, Jeanne de Saint-Rémy scammed the royal jewelers out of a necklace made from six hundred and forty-seven diamonds by pretending she was best friends with Queen Marie Antoinette. In the mid-1800s, sisters Kate and Maggie Fox began pretending they could speak to spirits and accidentally started a religious movement that was soon crawling with female con artists. A gal calling herself Loreta Janeta Velasquez claimed to be a soldier and convinced people she worked for the Confederacy—or the Union, depending on who she was talking to. Meanwhile, Cassie Chadwick was forging paperwork and getting banks to loan her upwards of $40,000 by telling people she was Andrew Carnegie’s illegitimate daughter. In the 1900s, a 40something woman named Margaret Lydia Burton embezzled money all over the country and stole upwards of forty prized show dogs, while a few decades later, a teenager named Roxie Ann Rice scammed the entire NFL. And since the death of the Romanovs, women claiming to be Anastasia have been selling their stories to magazines. What about today? Spoiler alert: these “artists” are still conning. Confident Women asks the provocative question: Where does chutzpah intersect with a uniquely female pathology—and how were these notorious women able to so spectacularly dupe and swindle their victims?

Hype

Author: Gabrielle Bluestone
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 1488059128
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 347

Book Description
"Hype is the best kind of nonfiction: juicy, sharp, savage and wildly entertaining, with a celebrity behaving badly on every page. What more could you want?” -Cat Marnell, New York Times-bestselling author of How to Murder Your Life From former Vice journalist and executive producer of hit Netflix documentary Fyre comes an eye-opening look at the con artists, grifters and snake oil salesmen of the digital age—and why we can’t stop falling for them. We live in an age where scams are the new normal. A charismatic entrepreneur sells thousands of tickets to a festival that never happened. Respected investors pour millions into a start-up centered around fake blood tests. Reviewers and celebrities flock to London’s top-rated restaurant that’s little more than a backyard shed. These unsettling stories of today’s viral grifters have risen to fame and hit the front-page headlines, yet the curious conundrum remains: Why do these scams happen? Drawing from scientific research, marketing campaigns, and exclusive documents and interviews, former Vice reporter Gabrielle Bluestone delves into the irresistible hype that fuels our social media ecosystem, whether it’s from the trusted influencers that peddled Fyre or the consumer reviews that sold Juicero. A cultural examination that is as revelatory as it is relevant, Hype pulls back the curtain on the manipulation game behind the never-ending scam season—and how we as consumers can stop getting played.

Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe

Author: Melissa de la Cruz
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250141400
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Book Description
Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe from New York Times bestselling author, Melissa de la Cruz, is a sweet, sexy and hilarious gender-swapping, genre-satisfying re-telling, set in contemporary America and featuring one snooty Miss Darcy. The basis for the Hallmark TV Movie of the same name available on streaming. Darcy Fitzwilliam is 29, beautiful, successful, and brilliant. She dates hedge funders and basketball stars and is never without her three cellphones—one for work, one for play, and one to throw at her assistant (just kidding). Darcy’s never fallen in love, never has time for anyone else’s drama, and never goes home for Christmas if she can help it. But when her mother falls ill, she comes home to Pemberley, Ohio, to spend the season with her family. Her parents throw their annual Christmas bash, where she meets one Luke Bennet, the smart, sardonic slacker son of their neighbor. Luke is 32-years-old and has never left home. He’s a carpenter and makes beautiful furniture, and is content with his simple life. He comes from a family of five brothers, each one less ambitious than the other. When Darcy and Luke fall into bed after too many eggnogs, Darcy thinks it’s just another one night stand. But why can’t she stop thinking of Luke? What is it about him? And can she fall in love, or will her pride and his prejudice against big-city girls stand in their way?

Starship Grifters (A Rex Nihilo Adventure)

Author: Robert Kroese
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
"My favorite read this year. A hilarious space adventure. Hard book to put down." ―Hugh Howey, author of Wool A space-faring ne'er-do-well with more bravado than brains, Rex Nihilo plies the known universe in a tireless quest for his own personal gain. But when he fleeces a wealthy weapons dealer in a high-stakes poker game, he ends up winning a worthless planet...and owing an outstanding debt more vast than space itself! The only way for Rex to escape a lifetime of torture on the prison world Gulagatraz is to score a big payday by pulling off his biggest scam. But getting mixed up in the struggle between the tyrannical Malarchian Empire and the plucky rebels of the Revolting Front―and trying to double-cross them both―may be his biggest mistake. Luckily for Rex, his frustrated but faithful robot sidekick has the cyber-smarts to deal with buxom bounty hunters, pudgy princesses, overbearing overlords, and interstellar evangelists...while still keeping Rex's martini glass filled.

Son of a Grifter

Author: Kent Walker
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061752509
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 747

Book Description
In 1988 a troubled young man and his flamboyant mother were arrested for murdering a wealthy widow in her New York City mansion. Suddenly, America was transfixed by a pair of real-life film noir characters. The media couldn't get enough of the twisted relationship between Sante Kimes and her twenty-three-year-old son Kenny. But the most chilling story of all was never told—until now. Kent Walker, Sante's elder son, reveals how he survived forty years of "the Dragon Lady's" very special brand of motherly love and still managed to get away. As a child Kent watched his mother destroy his hardworking father, Ed Walker, and then—with Kent's painful collusion—snare what Sante called "my millionaire." When she married seemingly respectable real-estate developer Ken Kimes, it was a match made in hell. For the next two decades Kent's mother and stepfather indulged in a globetrotting orgy of criminal behaviour. Kent, their would-be recruit, was privy to the family business—torching houses, defrauding friends, crashing White When Kent's half-brother, Kenny was born, Kent was twelve years old—old enough to know that he was his younger sibling's only protector. Kent tried desperately to save Kenny from his mother's sinister bidding. His failure haunts him to this day.