Beth Raymer's 6 favorite books

As a film based on her book Lay the Favorite arrives in theaters, the author shares her favorite stories about lost souls

Beth Raymer author of the gambling memoir, Lay the Favorite studied offshore gambling operations in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama.

Fat City by Leonard Gardner (Univ. of Calif., $25). The most realistic account of boxing I've ever read. There is no televised bout or belt to be won, no such thing as the "one big fight." There is only a poster nailed to a whitewashed wall and a trainer so burned out on domestic life that, "when his children ran across the street without looking, he said nothing." To me, Fat City is a story about unending loss: what happens when the little things — splintered bones, damaged noses, swollen brows — add up.

My Story by Amy Fisher (out of print). An entirely unapologetic first-person account of attempted murder. Fisher never really knows what's going on, but she does realize that her life is going nowhere as she finds herself obsessing over her married lover — who happens to be the most manipulative auto body shop owner on all of Long Island. Unwittingly, she transcends the true crime genre and produces a perfectly concentrated lost-soul-swaying masterpiece.

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