swindlers and swindling

"Seventeen-year-old Mark "Shark" Hewitt is good at playing pool. Really good. When he, his mom and sister move to a new town, Mark immediately seeks out the local pool hall. He loves to play, but even more than that, he just loves hanging out with the regulars. It reminds him of good times with his dad, who is no longer in the picture. When one of the patrons notices Mark's natural gift for the game, he forces Mark to use his talent for profit. Now Mark has to find a way to get out from under this sleazeball's thumb and protect his family"--Provided by publisher.

Describes the Cardiff Giant hoax, in which people of upstate New York were fooled into believing that the petrified form of a giant human being had been uncovered from the ground in 1869.

The Great McGinty: An opportunist turns corruption into a promising political career but struggles to stay on top when he tries to go honest. Christmas in July: Hope springs eternal when an office clerk mistakenly believes he's won a coffee slogan challenge and spends the 'prize money'. The Lady Eve: It's the ultimate battle of the sexes when a wealthy heir falls for a con woman with a shady past. Sullivan's Travels: a wealthy director wants to find 'real' people for his next great film. The Palm Beach Story: Money makes the world go 'round, or so Gerry believes when she decides to divorce her struggling husband to support him by marrying a millionaire. The Great Moment: This stirring biopic follows the fascinating life of W.T.G. Morton, a 19th century dentist who successfully develops the first anesthesia. Hail the Conquering Hero: A quirky soldier gets an unexpected homecoming when a group of uproarious Marines decides to 'make' a hero out of the comic misfit.

The Marx Brothers goof and bumble their way through a series of hilarious misadventures.

Examines security analyst Harry Markopolous's investigation into a Ponzi scheme executed by Bernard L. Maddoff which cost investors fifty billion dollars.

Former con man Frank Abagnale, an authority on financial foul play, tells stories of the adventures he had while living the high life as a criminal.

Fifteen-year-old Kat Bishop and her fellow talented teenagers work together to find and steal the "Cleopatra Emerald" from an unscrupulous dealer and return it to its rightful owner, while a former love of her Uncle Eddie tries to get the gem for herself.

After unscrupulous collector S. Wendell Palamino cons him out of a valuable baseball card, sixth-grader Griffin Bing puts together a band of misfits to break into Palomino's heavily guarded store and steal the card back, planning to use the money to finance his father's failing invention, the Smart Pick fruit picker.

A con man in the guise of a traveling salesman gets off the train in River City, Iowa. He convinces the town and the town librarian to finance a children's marching band instead of a pool hall.

"On the South Side of Chicago in 1974, Linda Taylor reported a phony burglary, concocting a lie about stolen furs and jewelry. The detective who checked it out soon discovered she was a welfare cheat who drove a Cadillac to collect ill-gotten government checks. And that was just the beginning: Taylor . . . was also a kidnapper, and possibly a murderer. A desperately ill teacher, a combat-traumatized Marine, an elderly woman hungry for companionship--after Taylor came into their lives, all three ended up dead under suspicious circumstances. But nobody--not the journalists who touted her story, not the police, and not presidential candidate Ronald Reagan-- seemed to care about anything but her welfare thievery. Growing up in the Jim Crow South, Taylor was made an outcast because of the color of her skin. As she rose to infamy, the press and politicians manipulated her image to demonize poor black women. Part social history, part true-crime investigation, Josh Levin's . . . book . . . is a[n] . . . account of American racism, and an expose of the 'welfare queen' myth, one that fueled political debates that reverberate to this day"--Provided by publisher.