The Color of Money
by Walter Tevis | 
The Chess Machine
by Robert Lohr | 
Sailor Song
by Ken Kesey | 
Dark Angel
by Sally Beauman | 
The Finishing School
by Muriel Spark | 
Pascali's Island
by Barry Unsworth | 
Asa, as I Knew Him
by Susanna Kaysen | 
Splitting
by Fay Weldon | 
The Neon Bible
by John Kennedy Toole | 
Panama
by Thomas McGuane | 
A Friend from England
by Anita Brookner | 
Brightness Falls
by Jay McInerney | 
Human Capital
by Stephen Amidon | 
Everybody's Fool
by Richard Russo | 
The Hair of Harold Roux
by Thomas Williams |
God's Pocket
by Pete Dexter | 
Take Me With You
by Catherine Ryan Hyde | 
Empire Falls
by Richard Russo |
Anne of Windy Poplars
by Lucy Maud Montgomery | 
The Sense of an Ending
by Julian Barnes |
Beth Harmon, an orphan by eight years old, is unremarkable. She is plain and she knows it. In the Kentucky orphanage, she hordes the tranquilizers handed to the children daily to quell the ache of dullness and routine.
A formidable math student, she is allowed to clean the blackboard erasers in the basement where she find the janitor playing chess daily. He is a sour old man and pays her no mind until she suggests a move he could have made. She learned the basics of the game by watching and he slowly teaches her the intricacies as she earns the right to learn them. Throughout the process her mind races and her dull, plain existence is replaced by the realization of prodigy.
By the age of sixteen she is competing, under the new freedom of adoption, for the US Open and is on her way to international stardom if she learns to prioritize her chess, her addictions, and the distractions of youth.