Playing Cards

A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK "A hands-on, real talk guide for navigating the hot-button issues that so many families struggle with."--Reese Witherspoon Tired, stressed, and in need of more help from your partner? Imagine running your household (and life!) in a new way... It started with the Sh*t I Do List. Tired of being the "shefault" parent responsible for all aspects of her busy household, Eve Rodsky counted up all the unpaid, invisible work she was doing for her family -- and then sent that list to her husband, asking for things to change. His response was... underwhelming. Rodsky realized that simply identifying the issue of unequal labor on the home front wasn't enough: She needed a solution to this universal problem. Her sanity, identity, career, and marriage depended on it. The result is Fair Play: a time- and anxiety-saving system that offers couples a completely new way to divvy up chores and responsibilities. Rodsky interviewed more than five hundred men and women from all walks of life to figure out what the invisible work in a family actually entails and how to get it all done efficiently. With four easy-to-follow rules, 100 household tasks, and a series of conversation starters for you and your partner, Fair Play helps you prioritize what's important to your family and who should take the lead on every chore from laundry to homework to dinner. "Winning" this game means rebalancing your home life, reigniting your relationship with your significant other, and reclaiming your Unicorn Space -- as in, the time to develop the skills and passions that keep you interested and interesting. Stop drowning in to-dos and lose some of that invisible workload that's pulling you down. Are you ready to try Fair Play? Let's deal you in.

Previously published as Simply Fortune Telling with Playing Cards. There is a certain romance attached to playing cards: from the riverboat gamblers on the Mississippi to genteel parlor games and the current popular surge in poker tournaments. How many of us while away our bored moments with a game of solitaire? This user-friendly guide will show you how to turn an ordinary deck of cards into a fun and simple tool for telling the future. Learn the past, present, and future with a regular deck of playing cards—no trivia, no special talents, no psychic ability. If you can read this, you can learn fortune telling with a regular deck of cards. The author explains the meaning of each of the 52 cards in the deck, plus the Joker, presents several layouts for general readings, and answers specific questions.

The Art of Playing Cards is your tour guide to a standard deck. This handbook covers the classic games, tricks, and skills you'll need to become an expert card shark. There’s something about opening a new pack of cards. It doesn’t matter whether you buy them at a filling station to while away a few hours on the road or if they’re a classic deck of Bicycle cards bought specifically for a poker night—they smell the same. There’s the same whiff of possibility, of hands to play or chances to take, of bets to win and of fun just waiting to be had. THE GAMES: There are thousands of games we could have included, but along with some of the most popular, we’ve also chosen those we think are the most fun, the most challenging, and the most exasperating. Also, much of the beauty of card games is that they vary so much, and we’ve included plenty of tips for trying something a bit different. Of course, when faced with so many variations and different games, it would be impossible to include them all here; we only hope that you like the ones we have squeezed in. THE SKILLS: Shuffles, cuts, ribbon spreads, fans, flourishes, false cuts, forces, false shuffles, finger lifts, double lifts… they’re all here, explained in a simple step-by-step fashion that makes it easy for anyone to pick them up. THE TRICKS: Here we’ve concentrated on tricks we think are easy and approachable because there are few things more frustrating than trying to do something that’s simply out of your league or utterly beyond your physical abilities. Thus, you won’t find any magician’s glue or funny specialized decks of cards; there are few props, and no fiendishly complex sleights and palms… and there are definitely no cards up anyone’s sleeves. We hope the result is a book that you’ll be able to come back to again and again, whether it’s to brush up on your shuffling or because you want to learn a new game or a new trick for the holidays. If you do that, then this book has served its purpose. Oh, and always remember, it’s not the cards in your hand that count, it’s how you play them.

The successful Simply series now offers an easy-to-use guide to the art of telling fortunes with cards. Starting with the general significance of each suit (for example, hearts stand for autumn and good fortune, while spades mean winter and possible trouble), it goes on to give a detailed interpretation of each card in the deck--including how the meaning changes when its position is reversed. Copious charts show exactly how to lay out the cards and interpret combinations and spreads. The many different patterns allow the reader the choice of providing a quick answer to a single question, or doing a comprehensive reading.

“With a deft hand, Johnson shows us there's no such thing as "too young" when it comes to questioning big ideas like manhood, or even family.” –Jason Reynolds, New York Times bestselling author of Look Both Ways and Stamped Literary powerhouse and Coretta Scott King Honor- and Boston Globe / Horn Book Honor-winning author of The Parker Inheritance Varian Johnson explores themes of toxic masculinity and family legacy in this heartfelt, hopeful story of one boy discovering what it really means to be a man. SECRETS ARE ALWAYS A GAMBLE Ten-year-old Anthony Joplin has made it to double digits! Which means he's finally old enough to play in the spades tournament every Joplin Man before him seems to have won. So while Ant's friends are stressing about fifth grade homework and girls, Ant only has one thing on his mind: how he'll measure up to his father's expectations at the card table. Then Ant's best friend gets grounded, and he's forced to find another spades partner. And Shirley, the new girl in his class, isn't exactly who he has in mind. She talks a whole lot of trash -- way more than his old partner. Plus, he's not sure that his father wants him playing with a girl. But she's smart and tough and pretty, and knows every card trick in the book. So Ant decides to join forces with Shirley -- and keep his plans a secret. Only it turns out secrets are another Joplin Man tradition. And his father is hiding one so big it may tear their family apart...