H. Lee Barnes's Books

Cold Deck

A Novel

By: H. Lee Barnes

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Jude is a Las Vegas casino dealer who barely survived the deadly MGM fire in 1980. More than two decades later, he’s still dealing, a tired, middle-aged man, divorced, struggling with debt, and trying to be a good father to his children. Then he loses his job and his car is totaled in an accident. When an attractive woman friend offers to help him get another job, Jude is happy to go along. Gradually, he realizes that his new job is part of an elaborate scheme to cheat a casino and that his own fate and that of his children depend on his finding the courage and ingenuity to extricate himself. Cold Deck is the exciting story of an ordinary man who finds himself in extraordinary circumstances. Moving from Las Vegas’s mean streets to the insider’s world of casino workers, this is a story of survival set against the greed, fears, and glitz of Sin City.

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Page Count

440

Publisher

University of Nevada Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0874178886

ISBN 13

9780874178883

The Gambler's Apprentice

By: H. Lee Barnes

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The Gambler's Apprentice

By: H. Lee Barnes

The Gambler’s Apprentice tells the story of a teenage boy growing up in Texas during desperate times. Willy, wise and capable beyond his years, learns the gambler’s trade and experiences adventures that demand quick wits—and sometimes violent actions. This is a multilayered story, full of Old West motifs such as cattle-rustling and gunfights along with more modern twists. Starting with a cattle-rustling scheme involving his father, Willy embarks on a life of crime early, eventually landing in a Laredo jail for shooting a man. During his incarceration he meets Sonny Archer, an itinerant gambler, who teaches Willy how to be a cardsharp. Upon his release, Willy roams the country, honing his new talent and getting into more trouble. During his time in New Orleans, Willy even winds up in a confrontation with an Italian crime ring. While all these adventures mold Willy into a clever card player and a masterful fortune-hunter, his grand ambition to be a professional gambler is thwarted when the influenza epidemic strikes. Willy is forced to return home to his family’s Texas ranch, where he faces the most challenging test of his young life and begins to prove that he is far more than simply an apprentice.

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Page Count

406

Publisher

University of Nevada Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1943859051

ISBN 13

9781943859054

The Lucky

(A Novel)

By: H. Lee Barnes

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The Lucky

(A Novel)

By: H. Lee Barnes

Unfolding from the bygone era of 1950s Las Vegas through the turbulent decades that followed, this epic novel examines the universal search for identity and reward in a world where the good life always seems out of reach. The streets of early Las Vegas are a tough place for a boy to grow up. Pete Elkins is fatherless, living in a cramped apartment with his mother, a party-girl with a penchant for falling in love with the wrong kind of man; and his older sister, who has grown up too fast from trying to parent both her brother and their reckless mother. Pete is headed for serious trouble when he is befriended by Willy Bobbins, a casino owner with a murky past and even murkier business practices. But Willy is also deeply compassionate and wise, and he soon becomes a surrogate father for the lonely Pete. Gradually, Pete becomes involved with Willy’s troubled family and comes to know both the scope of his mentor’s power and the depth of his vulnerabilities.

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Page Count

849

Publisher

University of Nevada Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0874179009

ISBN 13

9780874179002

Gunning For Ho

Vietnam Stories

By: H. Lee Barnes

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Gunning For Ho

Vietnam Stories

By: H. Lee Barnes

In this rich and varied collection of short stories (six stories & one novella), former Green Beret Lee Barnes deals with the war itself and with its aftermath, but his stories focus more on the human aspects of men in armed conflict and families at home than on the violent drama or political aspects of that war.

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Page Count

233

Publisher

University of Nevada Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0874179017

ISBN 13

9780874179019

Minimal Damage

Stories Of Veterans

By: H. Lee Barnes

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Minimal Damage

Stories Of Veterans

By: H. Lee Barnes

In the seven stories and novella of Minimal Damage, veterans search for dignity in a civilian life that has no need for men who were soldiers. Finding themselves psychically scarred, in crisis, on the fringes of society, or in battle with their memories, these men are living "like warts on America's ass." The characters range from the enigmatic Mr. K, who runs a reality television show and once led an escape from a Korean pow camp, to the doomed Billy Debecki, who regains his dignity in the last minutes of his life by remembering that he once willingly risked his life to save an enemy soldier. In one story, a man who was never a soldier finds a path toward reconciliation with his brother, a former Marine. In another, a man recalls becoming a soldier by watching the humanity of a fellow recruit disintegrate in basic training. In the novella "Snake Boy," a homeless Vietnam vet is kidnapped by a snake-handling evangelist. In proper, upstanding lives and lost, drifting ones, the depth of damage is never immediately apparent for these men. In war, chance, luck, and arbitrary timing conspire to determine a soldier's fate. As civilians, the same uncontrollable forces influence who finds a place in society and who is doomed to keep searching. With emotion, humor, and clarity, Barnes creates characters who show us what it is to live with the trauma of having experienced combat. The fractured souls and lives of these men remind us that the damage doesn't remain on the battlefield. Western Literature Series.

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Page Count

284

Publisher

University of Nevada Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0874177294

ISBN 13

9780874177299

When We Walked Above the Clouds

A Memoir of Vietnam

By: H. Lee Barnes

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When We Walked Above the Clouds

A Memoir of Vietnam

By: H. Lee Barnes

There is the mythology of the Green Berets, of their clandestine, special operations as celebrated in story and song. And then there is the reality of one soldier?s experience, the day-to-day loss and drudgery of a Green Beret such as H. Lee Barnes, whose story conveys the daily grind and quiet desperation behind polished-for-public-consumption accounts of military heroics. In When We Walked Above the Clouds, Barnes tells what it was like to be a Green Beret, first in the Dominican Republic during the civil war of 1965, and then at A-107, Tra Bong, Vietnam. There, he eventually came to serve as the advisor to a Combat Recon Platoon, which consisted chiefly of Montagnard irregulars. Though ?nothing extraordinary,? as Barnes saw it, his months of simply doing what the mission demanded make for sobering reading: the mundane business of killing rats, cleaning guns, and building bunkers renders the intensity of patrols and attacks all the more harrowing. More than anything, Barnes?s story is one of loss?of morale lost to alcoholism, teammates lost to friendly fire, missions aborted, and missions endlessly and futilely repeated. As the story advances, so does the attrition?teammates transferred, innocence cast off, confidence in leadership whittled away. And yet, against this dark background, Barnes still manages to honor the quiet professionals whose service, overshadowed by the outsized story of Vietnam, nonetheless carried the day.

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Page Count

316

Publisher

U of Nebraska Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0803234481

ISBN 13

9780803234482

Dummy Up And Deal

Inside The Culture Of Casino Dealing

By: H. Lee Barnes

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Dummy Up And Deal

Inside The Culture Of Casino Dealing

By: H. Lee Barnes

The glitter and excitement that tourists associate with casinos is only a facade. To the gaming industry's front-line employees, its dealers, the casino is a far less glamorous environment, a workplace full of emotional tension, physical and mental demands, humor and pathos. Author H. Lee Barnes, who spent many years as a dealer in some of Las Vegas's best-known casinos, shows us this world from the point of view of the table-games dealer. Told in the voices of dozens of dealers, male and female, young and old, Dummy Up and Deal takes us to the dealer's side of the table. We observe the "breaking in" that constitutes a dealer's training, where the hands learn the motions of the game while the mind undergoes the requisite hardening to endure long hours of concentration and the demands of often unreasonable and sometimes abusive players. We discover how dealers are hired and assigned to shifts and tables, how they interact with each other and with their supervisors, and how they deal with players—the winners and the losers, the "Sweethearts" and the "Dragon Lady," the tourists looking for a few thrills and the mobsters showing off their "juice." We observe cheaters on both sides of the table and witness the exploits of such high-rollers as Frank Sinatra and Colonel Parker, Elvis's manager. And we learn about the dealers' lives after-hours, how some juggle casino work with family responsibilities while others embrace the bohemian lifestyle of the Strip and sometimes lose themselves to drugs, drink, or sex. It's a life that invites cynicism and bitterness, that can erode the soul and deaden the spirit. But the dealer's life can also offer moments of humor, encounters with generous and kindly players, moments of pride or humanity or professional solidarity. Barnes writes with the candor of a keen observer of his profession, someone who has seen it all—many times—but has never lost his capacity to wonder, to sympathize, or to laugh. Dummy Up and Deal is a colorful insider's view of the casino industry, a fascinating glimpse behind the glitter into the real world of the casino worker.

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Page Count

206

Publisher

University of Nevada Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

087417550X

ISBN 13

9780874175509

Car Tag

By: H. Lee Barnes

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Car Tag

By: H. Lee Barnes

Car Tag chronicles the trials of the Debecki family as it comes to the end of a nine-year ordeal that began with young Billy Debecki killing a police officer and the efforts of his older brother, Drew, to find some way to spare him the death penalty. As much a study in character and in the Nevada way as it is the unveiling of a mystery covered over by time and grief, Car Tag powerfully engages with the somber recognition of lost youth and hopes. Wending his way through a series of backdrops, from the open desert near Rhyolite, Nevada, to the Nevada Supreme Court, author H. Lee Barnes gives a study in the chords of memory, stretched thin through time and tragedy, but still preserving a connection that may save Billy's life.

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Page Count

184

Published Date

ISBN 10

1469903180

ISBN 13

9781469903187

Book's by H. Lee Barnes

Cold Deck

Cold Deck

The Gambler's Apprentice

The Gambler's Apprentice

The Lucky

The Lucky

Gunning For Ho

Gunning For Ho

Minimal Damage

Minimal Damage

When We Walked Above the Clouds

When We Walked Above the Clouds

Dummy Up And Deal

Dummy Up And Deal

Car Tag

Car Tag

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