The queen's gambit - Walter Tevis

Beth Harmon, plain, round-faced, and orphaned, is only eight when she discovers her astonishing talent for playing chess. Kentucky State Champion at thirteen, she embarks on a dazzling series of tournament wins, rising to become US Champion at eighteen and the highest-ranked woman player in the history of the game. But the cost of her crown is isolation and despair. Bereaved a second time when her adoptive mother dies, abandoned by her lovers, almost destroyed by drink and pills, she finds herself in Moscow, alone and terrified, facing the toughest match of her career.

Beth’s rise to the top of world championship chess is as exciting as it is seductive. A rags-to-riches tale to enthrall chess players and non-players alike, it is a fascinating excursion into a select and mysterious world where games of the greatest intricacy and elegance are played out by skilled combatants with the savagery of gladiators.

The Queen’s Gambit—a brilliant and compulsive novel about winning—is a story of childhood genius and adult obsession, a thriller of marvellous originality and suspense about the most complex and exhilarating pastime in the world.