Last Call: A Novel

In Last Call, the Locus Fantasy Award and World Fantasy Award winner by Tim Powers, ex-professional gambler Scott Crane hasn't returned to Las Vegas, or held a hand of cards, in ten years. But nightmares about a strange poker game he once attended—a contest he believed he walked away from a big winner—are drawing him back to the magical city.. because the mythic game did not end that night in 1969. And the price of his winnings was his soul.

This edition of Last Call includes a special P.S. section with additional insights from the author, background material, suggestions for further reading, and more.

Enchantingly dark and compellingly real, the World Fantasy Award-winning novel Last Call is a masterpiece of magic realism from critically acclaimed author Tim Powers.

Set in the gritty, dazzling underworld known as Las Vegas, Last Call tells the story of a one-eyed professional gambler who discovers that he was not the big winner in a long-ago poker game . . . and now must play for the highest stakes ever as he searches for a way to win back his soul.

“Offbeat and daringly inventive . . . . Powers has created a mind-bending miz of genres, placing his gifts for extreme speculative fiction in service of a fantastical spy story.” - Publishers Weekly

“[Powers] orchestrates reality and fantasy so artfully that the reader is not allowed a moment’s doubt throughout this tall tale.” - The New Yorker

“Highly ingenious . . . No one else writes like Powers, and Declare finds him at the top of his game.” - San Francisco Chronicle

“Powers is an ace stylist, with plotting and characterization skills that are invariably engaging . .. He moves the plotting blocks around into a pleasing and well-paced structure.” - San Diego Union-Tribune

“Tim Powers is a brilliant writer. Declare’s occult subtext for the deeper Cold War is wonderfully original and brilliantly imagined.” - William Gibson