Chess Fiction History and Chronicles.
Explore the best chess fiction, history, and chronicles with our curated list of books. Dive into captivating stories, legendary games, and the rich heritage of chess through literature.
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The Queen's Gambit
by Walter Tevis
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Engaging and fast-paced, this gripping coming-of-age novel of chess, feminism, and addiction speeds to a conclusion as elegant and satisfying as a mate in four. Now a highly acclaimed, award-winning Netflix series. Eight year-old orphan Beth Harmon is quiet, sullen, and by all appearances unremarkable. That is, until she plays her first game of chess. Her senses grow sharper, her thinking clearer, and for the first time in her life she feels herself fully in control. By the age of sixteen, she’s competing for the U.S. Open championship. But as Beth hones her skills on the professional circuit, the stakes get higher, her isolation grows more frightening, and the thought of escape becomes all the more tempting.
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The Royal Game & Other Stories
by Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig gained early fame as a poet, translator, and biographer. When he added fiction to his repertoire, his work was critically acclaimed. However, Zweig has fallen into an undeserved obscurity, and unlike the works of his contemporaries and admirers--fellow Austrian and German writers such as Thomas Man, Herman Hesse, and Sigmund Freud--Zweig's writings have become almost completely unavailable to the English-speaking audience. The Royal Game and Other Stories is a collection of five of his brilliant creative achievements, revives Zweig's art, making it once again available to a wide range of readers. Spanning his entire career, the stories included-""The Royal Game,"" ""Amok,"" ""Letter from an Unknown Woman,"" ""The Burning Secret,"" and ""Fear""-each reveal an individual's passionate response to life. Toying with the theme of the mind left to itself, Zweig gives the reader everything from the story of a child's distrust of his mother to one of a man driven to insanity by his imaginary chess games. Zweig's enormous interest in psychology and psychological problems combine with early century settings to provide compelling stories that prove Zweig to be a master of psychological narrative. Through the years, the stories of Stefan Zweig have been hailed as intense and memorable psychological thrillers-adventures of the mind-with wide, universal appeal. The five masterpieces in this book reveal why Zweig has earned such praise, and should help his legacy continue on to a new generation of readers.
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The Tower Struck by Lightning
by Fernando Arrabal
"The final, definitive match in the competition for the World Chess Championship is about to begin. Contenders Elias Tarsis and Marc Amary take their places at the board. The judges' implacable clock begins to tick, and a hush falls over the capacity crowd in Paris's Beaubourg Center Theater. But before the players can make their first moves, they are distracted by news of the kidnapping of a high-ranking Soviet diplomat. Tarsis--an artist and an intuitive genius--is convinced that his despised opponent--a world-renowned physicist--is behind the kidnapping. So begins the game, and so begins this darkly comic, metaphysical mystery novel ..."--Jckt.
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The Eight
by Katherine Neville
Computer expert Cat Velis is heading for a job to Algeria. Before she goes, a mysterious fortune teller warns her of danger, and an antique dealer asks her to search for pieces to a valuable chess set that has been missing for years...In the South of France in 1790 two convent girls hide valuable pieces of a chess set all over the world, because the game that can be played with them is too powerful....
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The Flanders Panel
by Arturo Pérez-Reverte
While restoring a fifteenth-century masterpiece, Julia, a young art expert in Madrid, stumbles upon a real-life mystery as she sets out to find the killer responsible for a five-hundred-year-old murder and becomes the target of modern-day intrigue, betrayal, and death. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.
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Through the Looking-Glass
by Lewis Carroll
The 1872 sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland finds Carroll's inquisitive heroine in a fantastic land where everything is reversed. Alice encounters talking flowers, madcap kings and queens, and becomes a pawn in a bizarre chess game involving Humpty Dumpty, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and other amusing nursery-rhyme characters. Features 50 illustrations by Sir John Tenniel.
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The Chess Artist
by J. C. Hallman
Exploring the obsessive hold chess exerts over its followers, Hallman examines the history and evolution of the game and the people who dedicate their lives to it.
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Emanuel Lasker
by J. Hannak
Standard biography brings legendary master to vivid life: childhood, education, decision to become a professional player, great exploits against Marshall, Tarrasch, Schlechter and other masters, happy marriage, flight from Nazi Germany and much more. 100 annotated games. Foreword by Albert Einstein. 101 black-and-white illustrations.
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The Human Comedy of Chess
by Hans Ree
Hans Ree, the Dutch grandmaster and leading international chess journalist, provides a collection of his most fascinating insights into chess developments in recent years, including the rise of Kasparov, the splintering of the World Chess Federation, the 'trivialization' of the world championship, and the most important one-on-one matches. He also examines some of the 'ancient history' of chess. These articles give the reader an excellent overview of the diverse events of the last decade.
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Kings, Commoners and Knaves
by Edward Winter
A cornucopia of games, positions, biographies, mysteries, howlers, reviews, quotations, etc., featuring a cast of hundreds from the chess world of today and yesteryear -- the champions and the under-achievers; the scholars and the bunglers; the saints and the sinners. Every page provides fascinating, little-known material from an author who is prepared to name names.