Sent to an orphanage at age eight, Beth Harmon finds only two pleasures in life - chess, for which she has a preternatural gift, and the tranquilizers used to level the children's moods. As she grows older and competes at ever higher levels of chess, and continues to find ways to adjust her own moods, the possibility that she will find a talent bigger than hers - a player better - becomes greater, and more unbearable. By the author of the classic The Hustler, The Queen's Gambit is the suspenseful story of a great skill pitted against the world.