“As lithe and cunning as its characters, Michael Kardos’s Bluff is a masterly exercise in narrative sleight of hand. This is suspense in its purest form—character-driven, immersive and hopelessly addictive. Prepare to be taken.”
     —Megan Abbott, Edgar Award-winning author of You Will Know Me

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“Michael Kardos is a master at ratcheting up the suspense, and Bluff combines poker, a brilliant con game, and two terrific women who run the show. If you haven’t read Kardos yet, Bluff is the perfect place to start!”

   ―Lisa Scottoline, bestselling author of Exposed
 

At twenty-seven, magician Natalie Webb is already a has-been. A card-trick prodigy, she started touring at seventeen, took first place at the World of Magic competition at eighteen, and never reached such heights again. Shunned by the magic world after a disastrous liaison with an older magician, she now lives alone in her New Jersey apartment with her pigeons and a pile of overdue bills. In a desperate ploy to make extra cash, she follows up on an old offer to write a feature magazine article—on the art of cheating at cards.  

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But when she meets the perfect subject for her article, what begins as a journalistic gamble brings into question everything Natalie thinks she knows about her talent, and herself. Natalie is dazzled by the poker cheat’s sleight of hand and soon finds herself facing a proposition that could radically alter her fortune—to help pull off a $1.5 million magic trick that, if done successfully, no one will ever even suspect happened. With Kardos raising the stakes chapter after chapter, Bluff is a breathtaking work of suspense from a writer at the top of his game. 

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"Truly gasp-worthy."

―Library Journal, starred review

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"Anyone who has ever wondered about how a card trick was done or where that coin (or pigeon or rabbit) went will love BLUFF."

―BookReporter

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