Playing A Dangerous Game

This whip-smart coming-of-age novel sees a group of boys embark on a madcap, high-stakes adventure of survival and friendship. Lumush and his three friends live with their families in Railway Estate, spending their free time in the countryside or in the yards behind the estate, playing a game of chance called pata potea next to the wreck of an old car. When the boys’ attention begins to wander farther, they discover a deserted house believed to be haunted. As they explore the house, they learn that it’s not ghosts they have to fear but the malevolent Mwachuma. By day he works in his junkyard, but by night he and his accomplices steal coffee from the railway yard and smuggle it into the “ghost house.” As the young boys are drawn into this criminal underworld, they face a mounting danger that threatens both themselves and their families. With rich storytelling and gripping adventure, Playing a Dangerous Game is a brilliant debut set in 1970s Kenya from a talented new voice in children’s fiction.

Sanger Rainsford is a big-game hunter, who finds himself washed up on an island owned by the eccentric General Zaroff. Zaroff, a big-game hunter himself, has heard of Rainsford’s abilities with a gun and organises a hunt. However, they’re not after animals – they’re after people. When he protests, Rainsford the hunter becomes Rainsford the hunted. Sharing similarities with "The Hunger Games", starring Jennifer Lawrence, this is the story that created the template for pitting man against man. Born in New York, Richard Connell (1893 – 1949) went on to become an acclaimed author, screenwriter, and journalist. He is best remembered for the gripping novel "The Most Dangerous Game" and for receiving an Oscar nomination for the screenplay "Meet John Doe".

What begins as a test of bravery or a sleepover activity—chanting in front of a mirror, riding an elevator alone, taking pictures in the dark—can become something . . . dangerous. This compendium collects the most spine-chilling games based on urban legends from around the world. Centuries–old games such as Bloody Mary and Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board are detailed alongside new games from the internet age, like The Answer Man, a sinister voice that whispers secrets to whomever manages to contact him with a cellphone. With step-by-step instructions, historical context, and the stakes for each game, this black handbook is the ideal gift for anyone looking for a late-night thrill—but beware who, or what, may come out to play.

The 1980s saw the peak of a moral panic over fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. A coalition of moral entrepreneurs that included representatives from the Christian Right, the field of psychology, and law enforcement claimed that these games were not only psychologically dangerous but an occult religion masquerading as a game. Dangerous Games explores both the history and the sociological significance of this panic. Fantasy role-playing games do share several functions in common with religion. However, religionÑas a socially constructed world of shared meaningÑcan also be compared to a fantasy role-playing game. In fact, the claims of the moral entrepreneurs, in which they presented themselves as heroes battling a dark conspiracy, often resembled the very games of imagination they condemned as evil. By attacking the imagination, they preserved the taken-for-granted status of their own socially constructed reality. Interpreted in this way, the panic over fantasy-role playing games yields new insights about how humans play and together construct and maintain meaningful worlds. LaycockÕs clear and accessible writing ensures that Dangerous Games will be required reading for those with an interest in religion, popular culture, and social behavior, both in the classroom and beyond.

Italy, 1582. When young seamstress Sofia Genotti delivers a mended dress to a beautiful widow in Modena, she has no idea she's about to become entangled in a dangerous game. Discovering that the distraught widow is being forcibly kept from the man she loves by a gold-digger intent on helping himself to her inherited fortune, Sofia hatches a dangerous plan . . . Contains the opening chapters from Gabrielle's brand-new novel, The Girl with the Painted Face.

What happens when you break all the rules...? Socialite Shara Atwood is used to playing the celebrity game. However, the buzz of vintage champagne is nothing compared to the heady gaze and indecently muscled physique of her new bodyguard, the enigmatic Royce...

Playing a Dangerous Game is a story about a Chicago City employee who is falsely accused of sexual harassment. At his sexual harassment hearing, another city employee befriend him, and they team up to make their accusers confess to falsely accusing them, but things go terribly wrong when bodies began to turn up.