Queer Luck: Poker Stories from the New York Sun

A vivid portrait of late 19th-century American gambling culture, where a simple card game becomes a theater of psychology, ethics, and survival. Curtis knew this world intimately, and his stories pulse with the specific tension of a poker table where fortunes rise and fall on a turn of the card. The collection opens with five skilled players locked in a high-stakes game, their faces lit by the green glow of money, and one of them a lawyer confronting an unbearable truth: the pot he won was filled with money that wasn't his. The choice that follows, to walk away from the table or keep the winnings, crackles with the same danger as any gunfighter's showdown. These are tales about luck, yes, but more importantly about what luck reveals about a person. Curtis writes with the precision of someone who understood that poker was never really about the cards, it was always about the people holding them and what they're willing to risk.