THE HAND YOU’RE DEALT

Putting aside basketball and racism, Volponi leaps into new territory—cards. Ninety miles from Vegas is a town devoted to poker, specifically a Texas Hold’em tournament engineered to benefit the entire town. “Huck” Porter is a high-school student with revenge on his mind: His math teacher, Abbott, last year cheated the town in the deal that Father Dineros set up when he started the tournament. Huck’s father had been reigning champion, entitled to wear the Rolex watch until deposed, when he had to be hospitalized, too ill to compete. When Abbott won, he went to the hospital and took the Rolex off his wrist, essentially killing him in Huck’s mind. Huck’s been studying Abbott and thinks he can beat both him and the hundreds of other challengers. Fast-paced, with a riveting opening full of guns and cursing, the book has an odd quality of the fairy tale, with an unrelentingly evil villain, a fairy-godfather figure in the priest, a beautiful princess for the prom and never any doubt about the abilities of the hero. (Fiction. YA)