The Splendid Ticket

Written by Bill Cotter

Narrated by Eliana Marianes

Angie Bigelow has won the jackpot: a $324 million lottery ticket. How will she spend the money? Will she share it with the father of her children, dissolute Dean Lee Grandet—even though he’s an inveterate gambler she plans on leaving? Angie, the lost soul at the center of Bill Cotter’s poignant and darkly comic novel, The Splendid Ticket, is facing this dilemma when a new tragedy tears through their household. Is that mere slip of numbered paper in the watch pocket of Angie’s Levi’s their ticket to freedom or the beginning of the end? In a fast-moving plot, shot through with originality and heart, this is the story of the Grandets discovering the alchemy that holds their family together, testing its limits and running headlong into whatever their futures hold.

Set in the verdant and sun-soaked Texas Hill Country, The Splendid Ticket tracks the push and pull, the bitter tension and the potent attraction, between these two impulsive individuals—and everyone caught in the storm that surrounds them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Everand Productions
• Release date: Apr 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781094446356

Bill Cotter

Bill Cotter is the author of the novels Fever Chart, The Parallel Apartments, and The Splendid Ticket. He is also responsible for the middle-grade adventure series Saint Philomene’s Infirmary, published by Henry Holt. His short fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. An essay, “The Gentleman’s Library,” was awarded a Pushcart Prize in 2013. When he is not writing, Cotter labors in the antiquarian book trade. He lives in Austin with his wife, the retired opera singer Krissy Olson.

Reviews for The Splendid Ticket

[Natale Michaud · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

She should have divorced his arse long before the lottery ticket win. Knowing how he lost money gambling, I would have kept the ticket secret. Instead because of him a daughter is dead, the other severely damaged mentally and he lost 200 million and made his family homeless. The book ends with no finality to anything except they are poor once again.

[michelle wilson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great book, the only downside was the narrator. I’m already looking for the authors other novels.

[My World · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

They should’ve had a Texan narrate. As a Texan, I get irritated each time she mispronounces words Texans would never!

[Deborah Chauncey · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The characters are real and lovable.
It's realistic and piquant.

[debbaworks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book. I think fans of Kevin Wilson or Tom Robbins will also love it. It has the same, off center, slightly quirky view of a nonetheless grounded reality those other two writers' work possesses. The tragedy, and there are a couple truly tragic events, are handled without melodrama, just a straight telling of what happened. All the characters are real individuals. At first, the narrator bothered me, but then I realized her slightly sardonic, flat reading was precisely what the story needed. I'm a huge fan of this book.