Business Fiction

Thanks to Winnie's new cider shop, Smythe Orchards is out of the red and folks can get their fix of the produce and other delectable products they love all year round. The locals are even booking the shop for events, including a June wedding! Winnie couldn't be happier to see the barn filled to the rafters for the big bash - until her doting ex, Hank, is caught in a heated argument with the groom. Winnie plans to scold Hank after the party, but spots him running off instead. And when the groom turns up dead, apparently hit by the honeymoon getaway car, Hank is the main suspect.

Adam Cassidy is twenty-six and a low-level employee at a high-tech corporation who hates his job. When he manipulates the system to do something nice for a friend, he finds himself charged with a crime. Corporate Security gives him a choice: prison—or become a spy in the headquarters of their chief competitor, Trion Systems. They train him. They feed him inside information. Now, at Trion, he's a star, skyrocketing to the top. He finds he has talents he never knew he possessed. He's rich, drives a Porsche, lives in a fabulous apartment, and works directly for the CEO.

With three novels and two short story collections published, Kevin Barry has steadily established his stature as one of the finest writers not just in Ireland but in the English language. All of his prodigious gifts of language, character, and setting in these 11 exquisite stories transport the listener to an Ireland both timeless and recognizably modern. Shot through with dark humor and the uncanny power of the primal and unchanging Irish landscape, the stories in That Old Country Music represent some of the finest fiction being written today.

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs are on the warpath in the village of Balfour, and the local shop owners fear that their financial sins are about to catch up with them. Meanwhile, Abbey Glen’s new Whisky Masterclass is a resounding success...until the latest group of students starts to drop dead in the night and Abi Logan fears that what they are really offering is a Masterclass in Murder. Missing money, dead bodies, and a whistle blower who may not be as virtuous as he appears leave Abi scrambling for clues in the dark. Will Abi find the killer before the inevitable happens?

In this groundbreaking work, Tim Harford shows us a new and inspiring approach to solving the most pressing problems in our lives. Harford argues that today’s challenges simply cannot be tackled with ready-made solutions and expert opinions; the world has become far too unpredictable and profoundly complex. Instead, we must adapt. Deftly weaving together psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, physics, and economics, along with compelling stories of hard-won lessons learned in the field, Harford makes a passionate case for the importance of adaptive trial-and-error....

How can you become a more successful manager, a stronger team leader, and a motivator who gets the best results from a group? Ken Blanchard and Marc Muchnick's The Leadership Pill provides the answer. Their entertaining and inspiring new book is a parable about the competition between two leaders with totally different management styles - a story that reveals the ingredients of truly effective leadership.

Caitlyn Brooks can't believe her luck when her biggest rival turns up at an out of town conference she's attending. CEO of the company threatening to take hers down, she wants nothing to do with Damien Reid or his billions. But the man behind the boardroom is so much more than she imagined.

This is the story of an ordinary man's life turning into an extraordinary journey, impacting nations, presidents and kings. It tells of a dream becoming reality, influencing the lives of people throughout the world. As he experienced the limits of success and personal ambition, he discovered an incredible liberty that is available to everyone.

Nolan Bushnell founded the groundbreaking gaming company Atari, the restaurant chain Chuck E. Cheese's, and two dozen other companies. He also launched Steve Jobs' career, along with those of many other brilliant creatives over the course of his five decades in business. In his eagerly awaited first book, Bushnell explains how to find, hire, and nurture the people who could turn your company into the next Atari or the next Apple.

What happens when a group of business executives, who find they can no longer exploit the inhabitants of Earth and despoil its natural resources because of do-gooder laws, travel to another world in search of easy profits? They find the locals thought of it first. This romp across the galaxy takes us to Kalista, the larger of the planets of the Smiling Disc star system, where intelligent life has been discovered that has a very different outlook from what we call intelligent life on Earth. The group of travellers gets the opportunity to compare not only business practices on Kalista with ...

Increase customer satisfaction and reduce cost! Increase revenue growth and improve productivity! This guide will provide you with the tools you need to work with Six Sigma and see an improvement in your business.

It's been three months since Abi Logan last checked in on Abbey Glen, the celebrated whisky distillery she inherited. With her oversize wheaten terrier, Liam, by her side, Abi returns to the quaint Scottish village of Balfour. But her relaxing Highland homecoming takes a stressful turn when she unearths an unseemly bit of village history, welcomes a group of Japanese whisky enthusiasts, and becomes shepherdess to an unexpected flock of sheep - all within the first 24 hours. Still, nothing's more stressful than murder....

Victoria Sinclair, New Orleans’ sassiest gossip columnist, thrives on the juiciest scandals. But when her pen starts making headlines literally come to life, she discovers a curse from a long-forgotten interview with a voodoo priest. Now, her words are rewriting reality—stirring up everything from city-wide chaos to a nose-diving tourism industry. With the French Quarter and Garden District teetering on the edge of madness, her three closest friends—funeral parlor queens with their own knack for drama—must join forces to stop Victoria from turning her column into a catastrophe. But ...

Today, leaders are trained, coached, mentored, and evaluated in 360° surveys. They learn about feedback rules, the theory of employee motivation, and how to set goals. Does this make them excellent leaders? Usually not, because key messages that reach the head but not the heart have little sustainable impact. Leadership is about the whole person, and people love good stories. In response, this book encapsulates the theory of leadership excellence in a compelling story about a fictional character named Kathleen Battlefield. Kathleen is in line to take over the family-owned business, but her...

The story wars are all around us. They are the struggle to be heard in a world of media noise and clamor. Today, most brand messages and mass appeals for causes are drowned out before they even reach us. But a few consistently break through the din, using the only tool that has ever moved minds and changed behavior - great stories. With insights from mythology, advertising history, evolutionary biology, and psychology, viral storyteller and advertising expert Jonah Sachs takes listeners into a fascinating world of seemingly insurmountable challenges and enormous opportunity.

A Stabbing at the Annual Blue Jay Bay Autumn FestivalAngela and Molly, the owners of Forks Up Catering, are the main food attraction at the festival this year. Thursday’s book club that Sue Whitmore, the mayor’s wife is president of, discovered a map while reading a historical journal about the founding families of Blue Jay Bay. They learn that two of the founders, the Edwins and Mayfields, had a falling out that for an unknown reason is still present today. Isaac Edwin is stabbed on the first day of the autumn festival; the likely suspect Dr. Brian Mayfield. Angela was shocked by the ...

Lawyer Jack Hanson has a successful career as a junior partner in a law firm, but when his father dies unexpectedly, Jack steps in to run his family’s media company. His goal is to pull the company from the brink of catastrophe and into the modern world as fast as possible in order to resume his professional life. Luckily, after hiring the talented, fun, and vibrant Samantha Edwards, he won’t be doing this alone.

Freddy Carlton knows she should be focusing on her lines for The Austen Playbook, a live-action TV event where viewers choose the outcome of each scene, but her concentration’s been blown. The palatial estate housing the endeavor is now run by the rude (brilliant) critic who’s consistently slammed her performances of late. James “Griff” Ford-Griffin has a penchant for sarcasm, a majestic nose, and all the sensitivity of a sledgehammer. She can’t take her eyes off him.

While most people prefer the relative safety of working at a job for somebody else, others are more interested in the independence, excitement, and creative problem solving that are all part of starting your own business and being an entrepreneur. But as Ethan and Emily Tuttle learn in their latest adventure, being an entrepreneur isn't easy, especially when you re up against some tough competition. Join the twins as they dive into the ins and outs of becoming business owners, solving the many problems that pop up along the way!

Edwin Lefevre was a stockbroker and an independent investor, as well as a novelist and writer of short stories. This lightly fictionalized account of the career of stock speculator Jesse Livermore was first published in 1923. Now, nearly 100 years later, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator remains highly recommended for an understanding of investment. Lefevre’s trading advice and analyses of market price movements are as relevant today as in 1923.