I waited patiently for the next hand to be played out, and I had a feeling it was going to be a Natural, a perfect nine.

His name is Lord Doyle. His plan: to gamble away his last days in the dark and decadent casino halls of Macau. His game:baccarat punto blanco-- 'that slutty dirty queen of casino card games.'

Though Doyle is not a Lord at all. He is a fake; a corrupt lawyer who has spent a career siphoning money from rich clients. And now he is on the run, determined to send the money and himself up in smoke.

So begins a beguiling, elliptical velvet rope of a plot: a sharp suit, yellow kid gloves, anothernaughty lemonadeand an endless loop of small wins and losses. When Lady Luck arrives in the form of Dao-Ming, a beautiful yet enigmatic lost soul, so begins a spectacular and unnatural winning streak in which millions come Doyles way. But in these shadowy dens of risk and compulsion, in a land governed by superstition, Doyle knows that when the bets are high, the stakes are even greater.

The Ballad of a Small Playeris a sleek, dark-hearted masterpiece: a ghost story set in the land of the living, and a decadent morality tale of a Faustian pact made, not with the devil, but with fortunes fickle hand.

Born in England,Lawrence Osborneis the author of the critically acclaimed novels The Forgiven, The Ballad of a Small Player, Hunters in the Dark andBeautiful Animals.His non-fiction ranges from memoir through travelogue to essays, includingBangkok Days,Paris DreambookandThe Wet and the Dry.His short story 'Volcano' was selected forBest American Short Stories 2012,and he has writtenfor theNew York Times Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler,theNew Yorker, Forbes, Harpersand other publications. He lives in Bangkok.