A brand-new Wild Cards novel, edited by #1 New York Times-bestselling author George R. R. Martin and Melinda M. Snodgrass. Perfect for old fans and new readers alike, High Stakes delves deeper into the world of aces, jokers, and the hard-boiled men and women of the Fort Freak police precinct in a pulpy, page-turning novel of superheroics and Lovecraftian horror. Officer Francis Black of Fort Freak, vigilante joker Marcus 'The Infamous Black Tongue' Morgan, and ace thief Mollie 'Tesseract' Steunenberg get stuck in Talas, Kyrgyzstan. There, the coldblooded Baba Yaga forces jokers into an illegal fighting ring, but her hidden agenda is much darker: her fighters' deaths serve to placate a vicious monster from another dimension!