Dead End Job

Frances works the night shift at a local convenience store, dividing her time between restocking shelves and working on her art. Her routine is broken one night when Devin comes into the store. He claims to be the son of a famous local artist and offers her advice on her drawings. Although he seems to know way too much about her, Frances decides, against the advice of her boyfriend, that he is odd but harmless. By the time she realizes the danger she is in, Devin is completely obsessed with her and convinced that if he can't have her, no one will. Frances will be forced to use all her strength to escape from Devin. Also available in Spanish.

Fans of Terry Pratchett and Shane Kuhn’s THE INTERN’S HANDBOOK will love this noir supernatural thriller. hr Death needs a vacation. Badly. But there’s a catch: There are people who cheat the system, always falling through the cracks and not dying like they’re supposed to. Who’s going to take care of them while Death’s sipping on sangria? The answer is simple: Death needs an intern, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that one prospect, Buck Palasinksia—a bankrupt hitman with a roleplaying addiction—might have what it takes. While scoping out his next target, Buck gets drilled in the forehead by a bullet and falls right into Death’s lap. If they shove him back into his body, he’ll have a few weeks to prove that he has what it takes to be Death’s right-hand. All he has to do is take out Public Enemy No. 1, John Dillinger, and quit smoking.

Men today long for a calling but often settle for the next best thing: a job. They aspire for a higher purpose but still have bills to pay and family to support. But what if men could find their calling in the work they are already doing? In his new book Calling: Awaken to the Purpose of Your Work, author Pierce Brantley uses practical language and shares actionable steps to show men how to redefine the purpose of their work and discover what it means to have a “called career.” Brantley shows men they can find a meaningful connection with God in the work they are doing right now. Men were designed for this partnership, and once they embrace it they will be awakened to the true purpose of their work—not just a career but a calling.

Husband and wife PI team Helen Hawthorne and Phil Sagemont both have their hands full, but only Helen has to carry drink trays—as part of her latest undercover assignment as a stewardess on a private yacht… Lost at Sea To catch a jewel smuggler on a luxury yacht, Helen needs to pose as the ship’s new stewardess—but between serving drinks to the snobs, scrubbing floors, and cleaning up after seasick passengers, she’s starting to miss dry land almost as much as she misses Phil. While Helen’s cruising to the Bahamas, Phil’s got his own job—trying to catch a sexy gold digger who may have killed her elderly husband for his fortune. Good thing he’s a self-proclaimed master of disguise, playing it cool as everything from an air-conditioning repairman to a Rastafarian. Helen’s a help to Phil on his case, but when she’s on her own on the high seas, Helen needs to watch her step as she searches out the smuggler—or she may end up going from undercover to overboard…

From Anthony and Agatha Award-winning author Elaine Viets—the thrilling mystery series about one woman trying to make a living... while other people are making a killing. After all she’s endured with her own marriage, divorce, and subsequent flight from alimony, Helen Hawthorne getting a job at Millicent’s Bridal Salon is ironic in the extreme. But the pay is in cash and that’s what matters for Helen to stay incognito. But there’s no amount of cash worth having to deal with the abominable Kiki—a wealthy witch who’s lording it over her daughter’s wedding plans with the aim of making the day all about Kiki, not the bride. She also thinks her money makes her invulnerable...but she’s proven wrong when she’s found smothered to death with her daughter’s wedding dress. And worse, the cops seem to think Helen is responsible. Now, Helen has to keep her identity secret and prove her innocence before the bride and groom read their wedding vows—and the police read Helen her rights...

Brock Morrison works a DEAD END JOB from Hell: He could have just gotten a job at Kroger's Starbucks kiosk a-crossed the street, but Brock Morrison is too vain (everyone knows that Starbucks is Fine-Arts-Graduate purgatory), so he takes a job with "The Father" as a maintenance man at The City Village (a low rent apartment complex in the city). It's a temporary work situation, Brock assures us, while he makes enough money to pay off his fiancé's engagement ring and networks in the city to become recognized for his clear artistic genius.Little does Brock know, The City Village is under the influence, if you will, of an ancient and evil order, and Brock isn't leaving anytime soon, if ever. ALSO: Don't go into Apartment Building 666, as if you needed to be told that. The Father would just like to remind him that, quote, "Books are great, but The Beating is coming Son and it's going to be a bloodbath."Speak in hushed tones; The Rats hear everything you're saying. Jose the Central-American dry-waller is trying to warn you that Jerry has enough weapons to take down the whole property, as in: kill everyone. Iced coffee makes the world go round. There is a Duchampian-esc contemporary art display at an undisclosed location on the property.The City Village has a strict No Drinking & Drugs policy during the day. This is a well known fact.

Dead End in Norvelt is the winner of the 2012 Newbery Medal for the year's best contribution to children's literature and the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction! Melding the entirely true and the wildly fictional, Dead End in Norvelt is a novel about an incredible two months for a kid named Jack Gantos, whose plans for vacation excitement are shot down when he is "grounded for life" by his feuding parents, and whose nose spews bad blood at every little shock he gets. But plenty of excitement (and shocks) are coming Jack's way once his mom loans him out to help a fiesty old neighbor with a most unusual chore—typewriting obituaries filled with stories about the people who founded his utopian town. As one obituary leads to another, Jack is launced on a strange adventure involving molten wax, Eleanor Roosevelt, twisted promises, a homemade airplane, Girl Scout cookies, a man on a trike, a dancing plague, voices from the past, Hells Angels . . . and possibly murder. Endlessly surprising, this sly, sharp-edged narrative is the author at his very best, making readers laugh out loud at the most unexpected things in a dead-funny depiction of growing up in a slightly off-kilter place where the past is present, the present is confusing, and the future is completely up in the air.

In this “long overdue manifesto on gender equality in the workplace, a practical playbook with tips you can put into action immediately…simply priceless” (Angela Duckworth, bestselling author of Grit), The No Club offers a timely solution to achieving equity at work: unburden women’s careers from work that goes unrewarded. The No Club started when four women, crushed by endless to-do lists, banded together to get their work lives under control. Running faster than ever, they still trailed behind male colleagues. And so, they vowed to say no to requests that pulled them away from the work that mattered most to their careers. This book reveals how their over-a-decade-long journey and subsequent groundbreaking research showing that women everywhere are unfairly burdened with “non-promotable work,” a tremendous problem we can—and must—solve. All organizations have work that no one wants to do: planning the office party, screening interns, attending to that time-consuming client, or simply helping others with their work. A woman, most often, takes on these tasks. In study after study, professors Linda Babcock (bestselling author of Women Don’t Ask), Brenda Peyser, Lise Vesterlund, and Laurie Weingart—the original “No Club”—document that women are disproportionately asked and expected to do this work. The imbalance leaves women overcommitted and underutilized as companies forfeit revenue, productivity, and top talent. The No Club walks you through how to change your workload, empowering women to make savvy decisions about the work they take on. The authors also illuminate how organizations can reassess how they assign and reward work to level the playing field. With hard data, personal anecdotes from women of all stripes, self- and workplace-assessments for immediate use, and innovative advice from the authors’ consulting Fortune 500 companies, this book will forever change the conversation about how we advance women’s careers and achieve equity in the 21st century.