Showing results by narrator "Vanessa Hart" in All Categories

As Darwin famously observed, the beaks of each generation of Galapagos Island finches change to accommodate shifting food resources, allowing the birds to survive by adapting their capabilities to the new environment. Today's business people should take note: In the post-crisis economy, traditional career strategies spell professional extinction, but the fluid new "gig economy" offers tremendous potential for anyone willing to adapt.

Too often discussions of management practice focus exclusively on managing people and organizational issues. Rarely, however, do they incorporate a discussion about technology or address all three dimensions in a balanced way. When they do, the result is game changing. In our hypercompetitive environment, those managers who are outstanding at being plugged into their people, technology, and organizational processes simultaneously excel at coming up with effective business solutions.

People wanting basic advice about stocks, bonds, mutual funds, retirement planning, and tax strategies are often frustrated by information overload. Picking the right book seems as daunting as deciding what to do with their savings and investments. Investing 101: Updated and Expanded removes both roadblocks, putting people on a path that they can understand and stick with. Kristof is renowned for taking the mystery and anxiety out of investing by keeping choices manageable

A "one-size fits all" approach to customer service is no longer viable. Businesses competing on service need to understand and cater to customers' racial, ethnic, religious, generational, and geographic differences in order to meet or exceed customers' service expectations. Crafting the Customer Experience for People Not like You explains how companies, brands, and products struggling to differentiate themselves in a sea of sameness can foster long-term loyalty and brand preference with exceptional and customized customer service.

One of F. Scott Fitzgerald's earliest short stories, "The Ice Palace" is about Sally Carrol Happer, a young Southern woman who is bored with her conventional life. She's engaged to Harry Bellamy, a young man from the North. Despite concern from her family and friends, Sally travels to Harry's hometown to meet his family. Hoping for an exciting adventure, she instead finds herself in a cold, unfamiliar place. There, in the dead of winter, she begins to question everything.

The only things Natalie Bouchard wants to change are the weekly specials in her Gram's diner. So when her high school sweetheart strolls back into Dearling, Texas, she allows herself to indulge in a little flirtation, but that's as far as it goes. Navy SEAL Sawyer Nolan has returned to sell his father's land and get the hell out, no matter how enticing he still finds Natalie. Until a storm rolls over the Texas hills, stranding them together at the farm...and the memories of their steamy past lead to a reunion filled with hot days and long nights.

USA Today best-selling author Susan Krinard continues the saga of Touch of the Wolf and Once a Wolf in this dark, compelling new novel of a tortured man with werewolf blood - and the beautiful hypnotist who vows to heal his wounded soul.

Tens of millions of women today drink to excess and their numbers are growing. Now Dr. Kitty Harris, an experienced counselor and therapist who is herself a recovering alcoholic with more than 30 years of sobriety, presents a new model for recovery that focuses on treating the pain in women's lives that can lead to a vicious cycle of addiction - not on the shame that fuels it. Combining her personal and professional experience, Dr. Harris offers tools that can help women who want to recover.

When Camolen's Council of Wizards is cut down by twisted magic, the only witness is a palomino stallion named Ramble. Convinced the twisted magic threatens Camolen, Carey, Anfeald's Head Courier, plans to question Ramble using the now-forbidden spell that can change the horse into a human - the same spell that turned Dun Lady's Jess from horse to human and took her to another world: the American Midwest.

When his sovereign - and best friend - was killed, Ehren, first of the King's Guard, had been sent far away on a wild goose chase by the First Level Ministry. When a First Level wizard orders him to find and neutralize the dead king's next of kin, Ehren is determined to find them - and guard them with his life!

In True Believers, Kurt Andersen—the New York Times best-selling and critically acclaimed author of Heyday and Turn of the Century—delivers his most powerful and moving novel yet. Dazzling in its wit and effervescent insight, this kaleidoscopic tour de force of cultural observation and seductive storytelling alternates between the present and the 1960s—and indelibly captures the enduring impact of that time on the ways we live now.

More than ever, Americans are realizing that if we want to keep this country great, we must be citizen-patriots. And here’s the handbook every citizen-patriot needs: The Essential American, featuring the fundamental documents of our nation’s history.

This collection of unabridged readings chronicles the lives of people striving to survive as aliens rule Earth. In James Van Pelt's "How Music Begins", a junior-high school band director struggles to keep the band members' spirits up after they've been shanghaied, by unknown and unseen aliens, and confined to a dormitory and practice auditorium.

Jason Murphy can talk to creatures of the sea. He can also change into a dolphin and, like all Protectors, has a bunch of other superpowers. None of them really help his situation: the love of his life doesn't trust him anymore. Lane thinks his promises of devotion are... well, fishy. When she needed him most, he was gone. She didn't know he was secretly fighting crime.