Showing results by narrator "Vanessa Hart" in All Categories

A business' current customer base needs to be considered among the company's most valuable assets. Discover the practical tools to preserve and grow this asset and boost your business by tapping into The Hidden Power of Your Customers. Existing customers are the key to ongoing business growth. They are the people who already know you and buy from you. Yet too many businesses allow their existing customers their least expensive, most easily acquired sales to slip away. Don't let this happen to you!   

When an old friend buys a trench coat and opens his own detective agency, PI Cat DeLuca sees a train wreck coming. Everything Billy Bonham knows about being a private eye he learned from Humphrey Bogart. And that’s just enough to make him dangerous. The bungling detective is in way over his head on a case involving murder and a stolen pair of Marilyn Monroe’s dazzling diamond earrings. His outrageous client, Cristina McTigue, is pursued by men who want her dead. Five minutes after meeting the woman, Cat would cheerfully kill her too.

Although proportionally women continue to lag far behind men as CEOs and board members at major institutions, there has been a marked uptick in the number of female business leaders in recent years. Looking at the changes that have happened at Berkshire Hathaway - Warren Buffett's holding company, The Women of Berkshire Hathaway: Lessons from Warren Buffett's Female CEOs and Directors provides a unique look at the gradual shattering of the glass ceiling at one of America's top firms.

 The New Edge in Knowledge captures the most practical and innovative practices to ensure organizations have the knowledge they need in the future and, more importantly, the ability to connect the dots and use knowledge to succeed today. 

Stories navigating the commplicated terrain of race in America, from acclaimed writers like Toni Morrison, E.L. Doctorow, Sandra Cisneros, Sherman Alexie, and Amy Tan The editors who brought us Unsettling America and Identity Lessons have compiled a short-story anthology that focuses on themes...

When Blaine Kendricks discovers strangers in Shadow Hollers, she thinks they've come to trade. She couldn't be more wrong. When Dacey Childers comes to Shadow Hollers, Blaine's family thinks he's there to hunt game. They couldn't be more wrong. When the Annekteh come to Shadow Hollers, they think the isolated community living there has no way to resist their invasion.

When Cara Marshall is transported to Narenta, she is proclaimed champion of its people against the sorcerous daemagos. Amid the grateful welcomes, Cara protests that she has been "world-napped", and wants neither her title nor her mission. "They've got the wrong person and they're going to get me killed because they won't admit it." With no knowledge of weapons or magic, can she save the Narentans and find her way home?

A superb collection of short science-fiction tales by this genre's contemporary, and emerging, masters. Alien communications are deciphered as Earth is destroyed in "Last Contact" by Stephen Baxter. A girl auto-asphyxiates to communicate with another world in Elizabeth Bear's "The Something Dreaming Game". And more....

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.

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.

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!

Isole isn't used to dark and dangerous types-at least, not this way. Usually she freezes them cold, literally. That's her superpower: ice. But Mordi has a way of making her lose her cool. With his dark hair and sweet green eyes, it's tough to remember that his father's the superest villain in all the world. Or, was. The pair joined in countless evil plots before now, but Mordi and Hieronymous are turning over a new leaf. They joined the Protectors to defend the innocent - and to give themselves a chance at happiness.

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.

The Trustworthy Leader reveals the benefits organizations enjoy when trustworthy behavior is practiced consistently by their leaders. Drawing from examples from the best companies to work for, Lyman, cofounder of Great Place to Work Institute, explains that being trustworthy means that leaders' behaviors are rooted in their commitment to the value of trust and not simply in an imitation of the practices of others.

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.