Love Be Damned

From the bestselling author of The Radical Leap and Greater Than Yourself comes the first book to directly address love as a hard-core business principle that generates measurable results It’s time to toss aside the touchy-feely notions of love in business and acknowledge the real power that it holds. Love is not only appropriate in the context of business, it’s the foundation of great leadership. To put it bluntly: love is just damn good business. That’s the simple but profound truth that leadership consultant Steve Farber has discovered in his extensive work with Fortune 100 companies and other successful businesses. His game-changing approach to love as a practical business strategy will help you to: • Identify your passions—and share them with others • Create a culture of love at work—and spark innovation, productivity, and joy • Serve your customers, so they love how you treat them—and have them coming back for more • Invest time in making personal connections—that are mutually rewarding • Focus on serving the needs of others—they’re going to love it • Do what you love—and make it your business, so others love it, too The proven principles you’ll find in this book will help you lay the groundwork for a thriving, competitive enterprise. When love is part of your organization’s framework and operationalized in its culture, employees and customers feel genuinely valued. Employees who are passionate about the work that they do are more loyal, innovative, creative, and inspired, and that translates to great customer experience. They don’t serve others out of obligation, but because of a genuine desire to improve people’s lives. And when customers reciprocate by loving your products, your services, and your people, that’s when something great happens. That’s when you get loyalty. That’s when you get raving fans. It’s a refreshingly human way of doing business. In addition to Farber’s field-tested strategies, you’ll find inspiring case studies from a wide range of industries and leaders, revealing self-assessment quizzes, and practical pointers on how to build a corporate culture based on love, the ultimate competitive advantage. At the end of the day, it’s just damn good business.

When the Nazis overran Poland in the fall of 1939, fifteen-year-old Stefan K.'s father was sent off to a German labor camp. Now, in the tense days of occupation, Stefan scrambles to help take care of his family. Yet when his brother, Mikolai, takes him out after curfew to celebrate his sixteenth birthday, Stefan makes a life-changing discovery: he yearns for men the way his brother does for women. As he juggles his time between his day job at a bakery and his evening work in the theater, Stefan becomes more aware of his desires. And then he meets Willi, his one true love. Everything about Stefan's love affair with Willi is damned. They are both men. Willi is an Austrian airman, a Nazi soldier. Stefan's brother is actively fighting the Germans in the Polish Resistance. Yet Stefan and Willi's love sees no boundaries of nation, race, or gender. It is too strong to deny. And too passionate to survive. When the Gestapo discovers their affair, not only their love but their lives are in great danger. Based on the true story of Stefan K., who has written a letter to readers at the end of the book Damned Strong Love is a novel that shows the power and importance of love even as it describes the terrible price of intolerance and hatred. Stefan and Willi's love was damned, but it was strong; Lutz van Dijk's powerful and humane novel is their legacy.

" . . . a gripping read that reminds us why the preternatural is a dramatic field for our enjoyment and (dare we say it!) moral growth."-- Eleanor Nicholson, Editor, Ignatius Critical Editions: Dracula When a sixteen-year-old orphan vampire adopted by an order of nuns matures into her immortal, blood-sucking glory, all hell literally breaks loose. Yet with every rapturous taste of blood, Jennifer Carshaw cannot help but long for something even more exquisite: the capacity to experience true love. As she struggles to balance her murderous secret life with homework, cross-country practice, and her first boyfriend, Jennifer delves into the terrifying questions surrounding her inhuman existence, driven by the unexpectedly human need to understand why she is doomed to alife she never chose. Bridging the gap between the literary tradition of Bram Stoker's Dracula and the modern teen vampire romance made popular by the Twilight series, Jennifer the Damned reexamines the legendary monster as a conflicted and complex being. Jennifer is at once the quintessential vampire, embodying an unholy union of life and death; yet she is also asympathetic young woman full of spiritual anxieties, gifted with a limitless sense of ironic humor, and possessed of a beautifully persistenthope in the love she yearns for.

Instant New York Times bestselling sequel to The Beautiful. Now in paperback. Following the events of The Beautiful, Sébastien Saint Germain is now cursed and forever changed. The treaty between the Fallen and the Brotherhood has been broken, and war between the immortals seems imminent. The price of loving Celine was costly. But Celine has also paid a high price for loving Bastien. Still recovering from injuries sustained during a night she can't quite remember, her dreams are troubled. And she doesn't know she has inadvertently set into motion a chain of events that could lead to her demise and unveil a truth about herself she's not ready to learn. Forces hiding in the shadows have been patiently waiting for this moment. And just as Bastien and Celine begin to uncover the danger around them, they learn their love could tear them apart.

"The Nazi persecution of homosexuals is dramatized in this story, translated from the German.... An important addition to YA literature about the Holocaust & about the gay experience." -Booklist

A collection of primarily gay-themed stories set in San Francisco and North Carolina that ruminate on love.

Cotton Candy, Full Moons. Fabled Lovers. A Cursed Virgin's Bite. If You Go Where Monster's Dance Red will Reign Over Your House Love Be Damned "That sounds like a load of gibberish if you ask me, Barb." - Wayne Johnson