Lost Vegas

Lost Vegas: The Redneck Riviera, Existentialist Conversations with Strippers, and the World Series of Poker... Las Vegas lures you to shed moral responsibility and piss away your money on indulgences like decadent food, entertainment, gambling, and sex. If you don't enjoy these pastimes, then what's the point of visiting the land of compromised values? Where else can you get a cheap steak, crash a Mexican wedding, get cold-decked in blackjack by a dealer named Dong, play video poker for thirteen straight hours, drink piña coladas out of a plastic coconut, bum a cigarette from an 85-year-old woman with an oxygen tank, speed away to the Spearmint Rhino in a free limo, get rubbed by a former Miss Teen USA, puke in the back of a cab driven by a retired Navy SEAL, snort cheap cocaine in the bathroom at O'Sheas, and then catch a lucky card on the river to crack pocket aces and win a poker tournament? Only in Las Vegas.

In poker, as in life, a strange and diverse group of gamblers meet in the game of their lives (and for their lives) in a Vegas casino. Combine a New York ad man on his third strike, a young woman running from a treacherous past, an F.B.I. agent with serious gambling issues, the would-be founder of the Las Vegas Greensox, and a big-bosomed black widow looking for unhealthy husbands; throw in Mikey “Don’t Call Me Cheeso” Mozzarelli and his two unfortunate assistants, and you’ll be all-in at a high stakes Texas Hold’Em table that will convince you that cards are war, disguised as a game.

Tiana Hanover, the sheltered daughter of Lost Vegas’ leader, has spent her life hidden away from everyone. She’s deformed, like the people her father routinely burns at the stake. Her only friends are her brother and her new guardian, Aveline, neither of whom understand the depths of her forbidden magic. Distressed by premonitions of her brother’s death, she leaves the safety of the tiny room where she has resided her entire life and ventures out into a world unwelcoming of the deformed and resentful of her powerful father. Leaving Lost Vegas gives her the first taste of freedom she has ever known – and sets in motion forces she could not have foreseen. For Tiana, the world outside the city is beautiful – and terrifying. Ghouls, Natives, a skinwalker … the danger scares her but will not dissuade her from saving her brother. For her companions, the greatest danger outside the city is the Hanover in their midst, a girl whose growing power could make her a threat second only to her father.

‘We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like, “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive ...”’

This “brutal and unflinching” novel of fleeting love in Sin City inspired the film starring Nicholas Cage and Elizabeth Shue (Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City). John O’Brien’s debut novel, Leaving Las Vegas, is an emotionally wrenching story of a woman who embraces life and a man who rejects it; a powerful tale of hard luck, hard drinking, and a relationship of tenderness and destruction. An avowed alcoholic, Ben drinks away his family, friends, and, finally, his job. With deliberate resolve, he burns the remnants of his life and heads for Las Vegas to end it all in the last great binge of his hopeless life. On the Strip, he picks up Sera, a prostitute, in what might have become another excess in his self-destructive jag. Instead, their chance meeting becomes a respite on the road to oblivion as they form a bond that is as mysterious as it is immutable.

Lost Las Vegas traces the cherished places in the city that time and the brutal forces of economics have swept aside before the National Register of Historic Places could save them from the wrecker's ball or, in the case of Las Vegas, before the Neon Boneyard can claim them.Organised chronologically starting with the earliest losses and ending with the latest, the book details the many hotels and casinos that failed to move with the times and got swept away for something bigger, better and brighter.Legendary names in the field of entertainment have come and gone - the Sands hotel featured many of the rapack in residence, but the casino is long gone. Howard Hughes and the mob featured heavily in Vegas history but neither could sustain their success for very long. Today, it is the showgirl who is under threat. That Vegas institution is under threat from the big setpiece shows such as Cirque du Soleil.Losses include: Arizona Club, El Portal Theater, Clark County Courthouse, Hotel Nevada, First State Bank, Las Vegas Rail depot, El Dorado Club, Old Ice House, Atomic Tourism, Helldorado on Fremont Street, The Green Shack, El Rancho Vegas, Hotel Last Frontier, Desert Inn, Sands, Sahara, The Thunderbird, The Mint, Royal Nevada, Stardust, Showboat, Hotel Biltmore, Dunes, Hacienda, Moulin Rouge, Tally Ho, Paddlewheel/Debby Reynold’s. Silver Slipper, Tam O’Shanter, Bonanza, Boardwalk Casino, Old Las Vegas Convention Center, Landmark Hotel, Aladdin, La Concha, Westward Ho!, Castaways

Discovering Vintage Las Vegas takes you back in time to all of the timeless classic spots this city has to offer. The book spotlights the charming stories that tell you what each place is like now and how it got that way from classic restaurants to shops to other establishments like the casinos that still thrive today and evoke the unique character of the city. They’re all still around—but they won’t be around forever. Start reading, and start your discovering now!

With beautifully commissioned photographs, and spectacular aerial views revealing the charm of each destination, these amazing travel guides show what others only tell. DK Eyewitness Travel Guides have been updated to include: expanded hotel & restaurant listings, better maps, enhanced itineraries, and easier-to-read print! Fully Revised and Updated!