25th out of 244 books
—
109 voters
The Winner
THE DREAM
She is twenty, beautiful, dirt-poor, and hoping for a better life for her infant daughter when LuAnn Tyler is offered the gift of a lifetime, a $100 million lottery jackpot. All she has to do is change her identity and leave the U.S. forever.
THE KILLER
It's an offer she dares to refuse...until violence forces her hand and thrusts her into a harrowing game of high-...more
She is twenty, beautiful, dirt-poor, and hoping for a better life for her infant daughter when LuAnn Tyler is offered the gift of a lifetime, a $100 million lottery jackpot. All she has to do is change her identity and leave the U.S. forever.
THE KILLER
It's an offer she dares to refuse...until violence forces her hand and thrusts her into a harrowing game of high-...more
Hardcover, 528 pages
Published
January 1st 1998
by Grand Central Publishing
(first published December 1st 1997)
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Dec 27, 2009
Lilyrose
rated it
1 of 5 stars
Recommended to Lilyrose by:
Janane
Shelves:
easy-good-reads
This started off with a lot of promise, and as the story trudged on, I got even more interested. And then it became absolutely boring and it simply got worse *Yawn!*
The thing I hate most about this book:
I HATE near-perfect heroines. LuAnn Tyler gets on my nerves. She cant be learned and intelligent all of a sudden, not to mention, she's always been drop-dead gorgeous. And of course, its a given that she's had a bad past and struggled to come out of it, but she does, in flying colours.
I cringe!!!...more
The thing I hate most about this book:
I HATE near-perfect heroines. LuAnn Tyler gets on my nerves. She cant be learned and intelligent all of a sudden, not to mention, she's always been drop-dead gorgeous. And of course, its a given that she's had a bad past and struggled to come out of it, but she does, in flying colours.
I cringe!!!...more
Being highly recommended to me I was anxious to absorb myself reading a good book. Unfortunately, this wasn't one of them.
Primarily, I was disappointed with descriptive nudity, a masturbation scene and a sex scene, all of which could have been removed and the book as a whole would have been better.
Nonetheless, the premise held the possibility of a good story but it was just too predictable. There was only one surprise in the book and the beginning drug on forever. Baldacci takes over a hundred...more
Primarily, I was disappointed with descriptive nudity, a masturbation scene and a sex scene, all of which could have been removed and the book as a whole would have been better.
Nonetheless, the premise held the possibility of a good story but it was just too predictable. There was only one surprise in the book and the beginning drug on forever. Baldacci takes over a hundred...more
People think winning the lottery is the best thing in the world. Not so LuAnn Tyler, who is 20, beautiful, dirt-poor, and living in a trailer with her deadbeat boyfriend, the father of her newly born daughter, Lisa. Then she gets a call from a mysterious "Mr. Jackson" who offers to make her rich beyond her wildest dreams. All she has to do is buy a lottery ticket and he will take care of the rest. LuAnn is also a good girl, so, though tempted, she doesn't want to do anything illegal, but circums...more
The book The Winner by David Baldacci is 628 pages, published in 1997 by Columbus Rose, Ltd. The genre is a mix of mystery, realistic fiction, and thriller. It follows the story of LuAnn Tyler, a dirt poor twenty year-old with a infant child who is offered a chance to win the lottery. Driven away from her home town by her drug dealing boyfriend, she wins the lottery and spends 10 years living abroad. Coming back to the US, she faces the killer known as Jackson who set up the lottery scheme. She...more
What would you do if someone offered you $100 million dollars and all you had to do was leave the country and never return? Yeah, me too! But then I read THE WINNER.
LuAnn Tyler is only 20 years old and already a dirt-poor single mother with an 8-month old daughter living in a trailer in Georgia. When a strange man, whom she thought was offering her a job, says he can guarantee that she'll win the national lottery, LuAnn's better judgement tells her to decline. But she comes home to find her boyf...more
LuAnn Tyler is only 20 years old and already a dirt-poor single mother with an 8-month old daughter living in a trailer in Georgia. When a strange man, whom she thought was offering her a job, says he can guarantee that she'll win the national lottery, LuAnn's better judgement tells her to decline. But she comes home to find her boyf...more
Jun 20, 2010
Jane Stewart
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
action-suspense-thriller
Above average plot with intricate developments, but it was missing the wow factor. Good but not great.
REVIEWER'S OPINION:
To let readers know where I'm coming from, my preferred genre is romance novels. The fact that I liked this should mean something since it is off genre for me. Throughout the book there was the underlying frustration of how can anyone ever stop this bad guy, but he gets it eventually. The story was excellent mechanically with good showing not telling. I would have liked more e...more
REVIEWER'S OPINION:
To let readers know where I'm coming from, my preferred genre is romance novels. The fact that I liked this should mean something since it is off genre for me. Throughout the book there was the underlying frustration of how can anyone ever stop this bad guy, but he gets it eventually. The story was excellent mechanically with good showing not telling. I would have liked more e...more
Ever since school got out for the summer, oddly enough, I have been reading a lot.
I picked up a few books at a local church book sale.
I have heard really good things about David Baldacci (mainly because of the movie based on his book, Absolute Power) and I found this book for $.50 so I thought I would give it a try.
In fact, when handing my money to the cashier at the sale, the lady said that this was her favorite David Baldacci book. She had good taste.
Short overview for you:
LuAnn Tyler had...more
I picked up a few books at a local church book sale.
I have heard really good things about David Baldacci (mainly because of the movie based on his book, Absolute Power) and I found this book for $.50 so I thought I would give it a try.
In fact, when handing my money to the cashier at the sale, the lady said that this was her favorite David Baldacci book. She had good taste.
Short overview for you:
LuAnn Tyler had...more
I started reading The Winner based on a recommendation from my eye doctor, of all people. Frankly I'd never heard of the author before, but decided to give it a shot. And I'm glad I did. I'm even more glad I gave up on the hardcover library book and, instead, got the Kindle version (it's much lighter!).
The Winner is a surprisingly interesting and good book. The characters seem very real and you choose your sides very early on. The plot is something else. Even though I'm a writer, I can't imagine...more
The Winner is a surprisingly interesting and good book. The characters seem very real and you choose your sides very early on. The plot is something else. Even though I'm a writer, I can't imagine...more
The trouble with Baldacci is that you can't put the book down.
When a back country Georgia 20 year old single mother with a baby is offered a chance to win the lottery , she knows that there has to be something "not good" about it. It is the only way she can see to get out of her abusive relationship and a future of endless poverty. Then she walks into her trailer and finds her baby's good-for-nothing father dead and evidence of his drug dealing present along with his associate, from whom she esc...more
When a back country Georgia 20 year old single mother with a baby is offered a chance to win the lottery , she knows that there has to be something "not good" about it. It is the only way she can see to get out of her abusive relationship and a future of endless poverty. Then she walks into her trailer and finds her baby's good-for-nothing father dead and evidence of his drug dealing present along with his associate, from whom she esc...more
An impoverished single mother, living in a trailer home with her abusive slobbish boyfriend and struggling to afford to feed herself and her baby. One day she gets an offer she can't refuse - the change to be guaranteed a win of at least $50m on the US national lottery. All she has to do is say yes...[return][return]In my brief intro above I've given away a lot less than is contained in the blurb on the back of the book - be warned! It's a fantastic concept with a very likable main character. It...more
Well, I've said it before, I'm a sucker for mysteries/crime/thrillers. I always have been. While other people were soaking up Judy Blume, I firmly ignored the conversations between God and Margaret and stayed up all night reading The Pelican Brief and The Client. Now, there are two questions that pop up given that information: the first being the question of how was I allowed to stay up all night at 13 (or so) the second is what was I really doing reading those books? To the first question I'll...more
I read the Reader's Digest Condensed version of this book, so that's my disclaimer if the original was SMUTTY at all...I really like reading condensed versions occasionally, when I want to break out of my young adult/juvenile fiction mode. I picked this book up at a thrift store on a whim...heck four books for 50 cents? BARGAIN.
This book was a fast-paced mystery about an evil genius who rigged the national lottery...and the young trailer-trashy winner and what it did to her life. From the blurb...more
This book was a fast-paced mystery about an evil genius who rigged the national lottery...and the young trailer-trashy winner and what it did to her life. From the blurb...more
This one, I immensely enjoyed. It was original and unpredictable (mostly), which are 2 difficult components when you read the amount of mystery novels that I do. It was intriguing with the lottery angle and the way it was done? GENIUS!!! (no spoiler!) Very creative mystery novel and probably my favorite Baldacci to date. I actually shuddered and felt a cold chill with some of the parts with Jackson (major CREEPER!!) Characters well-developed and intriguing from Charlie, the older "grandpa" type...more
This could have been a fantastic book, but I have a strong feeling the author rushed it to meet a deadline.
The plot: A poor, single mother living with her dirtbag boyfriend is given the opportunity of a lifetime. She has the chance to win $100,000,000 in a Federal lottery with one condition. She must leave the country with her infant daughter and never return. She takes the bait and the villain that fixes the lottery so she can win proves to be more diabolical than she could have ever possibly...more
The plot: A poor, single mother living with her dirtbag boyfriend is given the opportunity of a lifetime. She has the chance to win $100,000,000 in a Federal lottery with one condition. She must leave the country with her infant daughter and never return. She takes the bait and the villain that fixes the lottery so she can win proves to be more diabolical than she could have ever possibly...more
Heard this on CD. Very good book. Plot kept moving along. Luann Tyler, a poor unmarried woman with an infant daughter caught in a generational cycle of despair is offered the guaranty of winning the national lottery - minimum of $50,000,000. She's a good woman whose purpose in life is to care for and protect her daughter. While the allure of being wealthy beyond her wildest dreams is tempting, she feels she cannot participate in the illegal/immoral plan. She's about to turn the offer down, when...more
My husband reccommended this one, and I was a bit skeptical. He usually likes more "thriller" type fiction, and I lean towards other genres. I really enjoyed this book though, and read through it very quickly. It was definitely one you don't want to put down. Baldacci does a good job or balancing the details necessary to keep a "thriller" fan happy, and mixes in the human element, via the mother-daughter relationship of LuAnn and Lisa, to keep us "drama" gals happy. :) Of course, the obligatory...more
VERY GRIPPING STORY WITH POOR CHARACTERS
In my opinion the plot is much better than the character development where I can see some little flaws, Baldacci put too much fantasy drawing Lu Ann (the heroine) the poor dirt girl who becomes the winner, who is stronger than a man, who deftly run away with a car when she had never owned one, (too perfect !!!) and also too much fantasy drawing Jackson (the villain), the master of disguise, remarkably bright, full of resources who can impersonate and outsm...more
In my opinion the plot is much better than the character development where I can see some little flaws, Baldacci put too much fantasy drawing Lu Ann (the heroine) the poor dirt girl who becomes the winner, who is stronger than a man, who deftly run away with a car when she had never owned one, (too perfect !!!) and also too much fantasy drawing Jackson (the villain), the master of disguise, remarkably bright, full of resources who can impersonate and outsm...more
This is an older stand-alone book (not "Camel Club" related) about a guy that learns how to manipulate the National lottery system, lure the potential winners into his scheme, and make millions for them and himself - at a very high cost which includes risking their lives. A page-turner with interesting locales and engrossing characters. The genius/bad-guy is a character unlike any I've read about before, who can change himself to look like anyone else using theatrical makeup as well as mimicking...more
Baldacci takes the reader on a what if trip--what if the US had a national lottery and what if it could be fixed. His heroine is a little too good to be true--the rags to riches story, but happier poor and always beautiful, strong, etc., etc. The details about the baby, however, were the worst--he didn't mention a single diaper, and he has an eight-month old content to stay in a baby carrier and have only bottles of milk as food---come on now. However, the story moves at an entertaining, fast cl...more
When people ask for a book recommendation, this is always one of the books I choose. It has a lot of twists and turns as it tells the tale of a down on her luck girl in a dead-end relationship, baby and no prospects for improvement until she meets a mysterious man who tells her that he can guarantee that she'd win the lottery. She just has to tell him by a certain time or the offer is withdrawn forever.
The books unwinds to find her escaping a situation with her druggie, loser boyfriend while th...more
The books unwinds to find her escaping a situation with her druggie, loser boyfriend while th...more
A book that gave a typical idea (fixing the lottery) a new spin. Full of murders, money, and love. My favorite character was Jackson. He had the power to become whomever he wanted to be. You hated him for what he did in the present and yet still felt sorry for him because of what happened to him in the past. I wasn't particularly fond of LuAnn at first, but she grew on me throughout the book. And I loved her because underneath all the money, the murders, the excitement of her life, she was just...more
This wasn't a bad book at all but it wasn't amazing. I really wanted to know how the lottery was fixed, and that explanation seemed a little lame, honestly. I would have liked to see more of the story from Jackson's view- it was more interesting when I read how he was thinking instead of viewing his actions through others. Sometimes I had to suspend belief- some things I just couldn't see how it was possible- even for the super rich.
The story got bogged down in the middle and then really picked...more
The story got bogged down in the middle and then really picked...more
My daughter loaned me this book and I had no idea what it was about as she had kept the dust jacket. All I knew was that she really enjoyed it.
David Baldacci spun a wonderful tale of a poor girl who is trapped in a bad situation and how she gets out with not only her life, but the life of her young daughter. She wins the lottery and disappears for 10 years while the local police look for her on a bogus murder charge.
When she finally decides to return to the USA, the man who helped her to win the...more
David Baldacci spun a wonderful tale of a poor girl who is trapped in a bad situation and how she gets out with not only her life, but the life of her young daughter. She wins the lottery and disappears for 10 years while the local police look for her on a bogus murder charge.
When she finally decides to return to the USA, the man who helped her to win the...more
Tale about the fixing of the National Lottery, featuring LuAnn Tyler as the unbelievable heroine and Jackson as the fiendish antagonist who is a master of deception and who helps LuAnn win the Lottery, then turns against her. Coincidentally, LuAnn hires a handsome former FBI man to build a security fence just as her life becomes unbelievably complicated. Add an older man (loyal friend/bodyguard) and a young daughter to the list of characters, and you can predict the major plot elements. I'd clas...more
It's like a silly movie in book form. It requires quite a bit of suspension of disbelief given the odd circumstances and odd characters.
Once again, Baldacci makes everyone into these "beautiful" creatures so that creates that first layer of falseness. Then we get into the abilities of the villain, the strength and power of the heroine, and the ability to fix the lottery? It just adds up to a lot of incredulity on my part.
I still give it three stars for being entertaining plot wise. However, it r...more
Once again, Baldacci makes everyone into these "beautiful" creatures so that creates that first layer of falseness. Then we get into the abilities of the villain, the strength and power of the heroine, and the ability to fix the lottery? It just adds up to a lot of incredulity on my part.
I still give it three stars for being entertaining plot wise. However, it r...more
Iniziate a leggerlo in una giornata di vacanza perché non riuscirete a smettere. Una frode alla Lotteria Nazionale americana organizzata da un ricco, vendicativo uomo d'affari in grado di trasformarsi in chiunque voglia per portare a termine i suoi inganni. Una donna forte ma sull'orlo della rovina accetta di diventare sua complice in cambio di immense ricchezze e la rinuncia alla propria identità e vita. Per poi lottare strenuamente, insieme a due uomini che la amano e che pure hanno rinunciato...more
Not one of Baldacci's best. LuAnn Tyler (20 something with a 7th grade education and a 9mo baby) is offered the chance to win the lottery. Her life turns upside down in a matter of 24 hours and she accepts. Later that week, she's 100 million dollars richer. But the catch - she has to leave the country and never come back. Ten years later, she's had enough and breaks the cardinal rule - moves to Charlottesville, VA. A story of mystery, murder, and intrigue. LuAnn isn't the most likeable main char...more
The premise: an uneducated, poor, single mom, who is wanted for murder is gauranteed to win the lottery by a very mysterious man, who's only condition is that she must leave the United States, forever. Of course, she gets so homesick, she sneaks back. The problem: she is incredibly beautiful beyond words. Worse, she's so physically strong, she's able to beat men who attack her. Instead of LuAnn, she should have been named Wonder Woman. Then there's the evil man of a thousand disguises -no- make...more
This is one of my favorite Baldacci novels to date. It IS my favorite of his stand-alones. It had an intriguing premise, an admittedly long set-up, but once it gets good, it gets really good. I think what fed the suspense was having so many likeable characters, all at cross-purposes with each other, while the one real villain is off to the side, pulling the strings. It's frustrating but compelling, a very entertaining thrill ride. For someone who's never read Baldacci and wants to give him a try...more
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David Baldacci was born in Virginia, in 1960, where he currently resides. He received a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Virginia Commonwealth University and a law degree from the University of Virginia. Mr. Baldacci practiced law for nine years in Washington, D.C., as both a trial and corporate attorney.
David Baldacci has published sixteen novels: Absolute Power, Total Control, The Win...more
More about David Baldacci...
David Baldacci has published sixteen novels: Absolute Power, Total Control, The Win...more
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Sep 20, 2011 05:51pm
Jul 18, 2012 06:33am