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The River: The Fifth Card
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Mar 26 2026
Pages: 204
Weight: 0.62
Height: 0.43 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Eight strangers. One poker table. Seventy-two hours. The same ghost.
Dr. Elena Marchetti has four months to live. She hasn't told anyone. She's come to Las Vegas not to gamble - but to feel what it's like to go all in when you have nothing left to lose.
Jake Nguyen built a perfect mathematical system to beat poker. It's a fraud. He's stolen three million dollars from investors, and the only way out is to win the World Series of Poker Main Event. One chance in 873 players. The numbers have never been worse.
George Georgie Blum won the WSOP twice. The bracelet is in a safe whose combination he's forgotten. His wife's name sometimes takes thirty seconds to come back. This is his last tournament. He just doesn't know if he'll remember it tomorrow.
Claire Weston is twenty-two years old and has spent the last five years planning this exact weekend. She didn't come to play poker. She came to destroy the man she believes murdered her father twenty years ago. She chose the players. She funded the tournament. She built the trap. She is the trap.
Rafael Sandoval stole two million dollars from the Sinaloa Cartel. He has seventy-two hours before they find him. The poker table isn't a game - it's a laundromat. Lose plausibly. Cash out. Disappear. Pray.
Magistrate Maggie Dubois was the most respected judge in Québec until she was framed for corruption. She didn't come to win. She came to watch. She came to find the proof that will clear her name - or burn the man who took it.
Danny Chen is a restaurateur from San Francisco who loves poker, loves Las Vegas, and has never understood why this city feels like home. He's about to find out. His dead father left him more than a letter.
Inspector Natasha Volkov, INTERPOL, isn't playing poker. She's running a sting operation twenty years in the making. She thinks she's the one pulling the strings. She's wrong.
Five casinos. Five acts. Five twists that will make you turn back to page one.
From the Bellagio's cold marble lobby to the worn carpet of Binion's on Fremont Street, THE RIVER follows eight lives colliding across one weekend in Las Vegas. Each character carries a secret that could save them - or end them. Each one believes they're the protagonist of this story. None of them are.
Because twenty years ago, at this same table, in this same casino, a game was rigged, a man was killed, and a fortune changed hands. The truth was buried. Until now.
The river is the fifth card in Texas Hold'em - the final revelation, the last chance, the card that makes or breaks everything. In this novel, the river is coming for all of them.
What readers are saying:
I read it in one sitting. I physically could not stop.
Eight characters, zero filler. Every chapter is a gut punch wrapped in silk.
The last two pages broke me. Then I immediately started reading it again.
THE RIVER is for readers of Gillian Flynn, Dennis Lehane, and Richard Russo. It's for anyone who has ever bluffed their way through life and wondered what happens when someone calls.
One table. Eight secrets. No one leaves the same.
The cards are dealt. The river is coming.
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