The New York Times bestselling author of Better and Complications reveals the surprising power of the ordinary checklist

We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies—neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist. First introduced decades ago by the U.S. Air Force, checklists have enabled pilots to fly aircraft of mind-boggling sophistication. Now innovative checklists are being adopted in hospitals around the world, helping doctors and nurses respond to everything from flu epidemics to avalanches. Even in the immensely complex world of surgery, a simple ninety-second variant has cut the rate of fatalities by more than a third.

In riveting stories, Gawande takes us from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour underwater, to Michigan, where a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospital infection. He explains how checklists actually work to prompt striking and immediate improvements. And he follows the checklist revolution into fields well beyond medicine, from disaster response to investment banking, skyscraper construction, and businesses of all kinds.

An intellectual adventure in which lives are lost and saved and one simple idea makes a tremendous difference, The Checklist Manifesto is essential reading for anyone working to get things right.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER 

Have you ever felt the urge to declutter your work life?

Do you often find yourself stretched too thin?
 
Do you simultaneously feel overworked and underutilized?
 
Are you frequently busy but not productive?
 
Do you feel like your time is constantly being hijacked by other people’s agendas?
 
If you answered yes to any of these, the way out is the Way of the Essentialist.
 
The Way of the Essentialist isn’t about getting more done in less time. It’s about getting only the right things done.  It is not  a time management strategy, or a productivity technique. It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution towards the things that really matter. 

By forcing us to apply a more selective criteria for what is Essential, the disciplined pursuit of less empowers us to reclaim control of our own choices about where to spend our precious time and energy—instead of giving others the implicit permission to choose for us.

Essentialism is not one more thing—it’s a whole new way of doing everything. A must-read for any leader, manager, or individual who wants to do less, but better, and declutter and organize their own their lives, Essentialism is a movement whose time has come.

Six years ago, private investigator Sid Halley retired. He’d been harassed, beaten, shot, even lost a hand—enough was enough. For the sake of his wife and new daughter, he gave up that life, and he thought nothing would ever lure him back into the game.

He thought wrong.

Sir Richard Stewart, chairman of the racing authority, begs Sid to investigate a series of dodgy races. Sid refuses. Then Sir Richard is found dead under suspicious circumstances. And then a man with an Irish accent contacts Sid, telling him to deliver a whitewashed report about the suspected race-fixing…or else.

At first Sid ignores these warnings. But as the intimidation tactics escalate—and his own family comes under threat—Sid realizes he must meet his enemy head-on…or he might pay the ultimate price for his refusal.

A determined young woman must unmask and outwit a vicious psychopath in this tense and clever tale of suspense.

On her way to Utah to see her dying mother, college student Darby Thorne gets caught in a fierce blizzard in the Colorado Rockies. With the roads impassable, she’s forced to wait out the storm at a remote highway rest stop with no cell phone reception. Inside are some vending machines, a coffee maker, and four complete strangers.

Desperate to find a signal to call home, the exhausted young art student goes back out into the storm . . . and makes a horrifying discovery. In the back of the van parked next to her car is a little girl locked in an animal crate.

Who is the child? Why has she been taken? And how can Darby save her?

There is no way to call for help and no way out. One of her fellow travelers is a kidnapper. But which one?

Trapped in an increasingly dangerous situation on the edge of civilization, with a child’s life and her own on the line, Darby must find a way to break the girl out of the van and escape.

But who can she trust?

With exquisitely controlled pacing, Taylor Adams diabolically ratchets up the tension with every page. Full of terrifying blind twists and hairpin turns as treacherous as a slick, snow-covered mountain road, this brilliant thriller will have you on the edge of your seat and leave you breathless.

A man of integrity…with a secret desire

Moose Garrett just wants to do the right thing. Fulfill his duty. Honor his parents. Fix his neighbors’ tractors. Ignore the girl he needs to forget.

Everyone in Sawyer expects Moose to woo and wed the town beauty queen – not Georgia Rowland. Hell, Moose’s parents have all but signed a marriage contract with the revered patriarch of another wealthy Sawyer family. 

So yeah, it’s true that Georgia’s been tempting him ever since he hit puberty and discovered the allure of the opposite gender, but that doesn’t mean he’s actually going to give into the temptation.   

Georgia is strictly off limits. 
Totally. 

But matters of the heart are about as predictable as a wildfire – a wildfire that comes straight out of nowhere…and changes everything. 

A woman who’s all business…with a secret crush

Georgia has spent a lot of years – roughly 26 of them or so – pretending Moose Garrett wasn’t the finest man in Sawyer. She pushes pesky thoughts of him clear out of her mind. She never pays a bit of attention to his powerful build, or how his blue jeans show off his lean and muscular body. And for the record, she barely even notices the way his slow, sultry smile makes her knees wobbly.

Because that hardly ever happens.

As the youngest branch manager of the Goldfork Credit Union, and the first female to hold that position, she’s too busy for any of that nonsense. Besides, everyone knows Moose is bound to marry Sawyer’s reigning beauty. Georgia is sure he’d never give a moment’s notice to…well, to someone like her.

But when Miss No Nonsense sets out on a hike in the foothills of Long Valley and gets trapped amidst the flames of a wildfire, the only man she’s ever wanted swoops in to save her.
So yeah, Moose is the last man she should dream about.

But he’s the one man who will walk through danger and smoke and fire.

Just to find her…

Inferno of Love is the second novel in the Firefighters of Long Valley series, although all books in the Long Valley world can be read as standalones. It has some strong language, and oh my, sexy times. Enjoy!

The dark history and dire secrets of a peaceful small town are summoned from the shadows of the past. Unholy forces are stirred from long slumber to monstrous new life. And two young misfits discover the chilling art of turning persecution into retribution. With these eerie ingredients, bestselling master John Saul once again works his unique brand of sinister magic to conjure an unforgettable tale of unspeakable terror.

For most of her young life, thirteen-year-old Angel Sullivan has been on the outside looking in, enduring the taunts of cruel schoolmates and the angry abuse of a bitter father. Then Angel’s family moves to the quaint town of Roundtree, Massachusetts—where a charming home is available, a promising job awaits Angel’s unemployed father, and most of all, the chance to make a new start beckons to the shy, hopeful teenager. But when she is shunned by her new classmates, Angel falls deeper into despair. Until she meets Seth Baker, a fellow outcast—and a fateful kinship is forged.

It’s Seth who tells Angel the unspoken truth about the legacy of murder that hangs over her family’s home—and the whispered rumors that something supernatural still dwells there. Uncertain whether the stories are true, and desperate to escape the torment of their daily lives, Angel and Seth devote themselves to contacting whatever restless soul haunts the dark recesses of Black Creek Crossing. But once they have begun, there is no turning back.

Guided by an anguished and vengeful spirit, they uncover the shocking events and centuries-old horrors that lay buried beneath the placid veneer of Roundtree. And along with the ghastly revelations comes a terrifying power—one that feeds upon the rage of the victimized, turning the basest impulses and most dangerous desires into devastating weapons. Now, the closer Angel and Seth are pushed toward the edge by their tormentors, the deeper they descend into the maelstrom of dark forces they’ve unleashed . . . and the more unspeakable the hour of reckoning will be.

Malevolent: Book 1 in the Cases of Lieutenant Kane Series of Police Procedural Novels

Tampa homicide lieutenant Carl Kane has a tough job. His day-to-day consists of decomposing dead bodies and removing murderers from the general public. But when two women’s bodies are found under similar circumstances, it quickly turns into more than your average case. The killer is clearly looking to make a name for himself, and his plans for these women go far beyond death.

When the media runs with the story, the killer’s moment in the spotlight arrives.

It’s up to Lieutenant Kane to bring the man the press has dubbed the Psycho Surgeon to justice. However, being the lead on the case has its drawbacks—like becoming the focus of the killer yourself.

As Lieutenant Kane closes in on his suspect, he soon realizes the case has become far more personal than he could have ever imagined.
 

Cases of Lieutenant Kane Series:

Note: All books are standalone stories. They are best enjoyed chronologically, but can be read out of order.
#1 Malevolent
#2 Requite
#3 Determinant
#4 Perilous
#5 Progeny
#6 Denouement

An electrifying thriller from New York Times bestselling author Dayton Ward, set in the Star Trek: The Next Generation universe.

2031: United States Air Force fighter jets shoot down an unidentified spacecraft and take its crew into custody. Soon, it’s learned that the ship is one of several dispatched across space by an alien species, the Eizand, to search for a new home before their own world becomes uninhabitable. Fearing extraterrestrial invasion, government and military agencies which for more than eighty years have operated in secret swing into action, charged with protecting humanity no matter the cost...

2386: Continuing their exploration of the Odyssean Pass, Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the Starship Enterprise discover what they at first believe is a previously uncharted world, with a civilization still recovering from the effects of global nuclear war. An astonishing priority message from Starfleet Command warns that there’s more to this planet than meets the eye, and Picard soon realizes that the mysteries of this world may well weave through centuries of undisclosed human history...

Home repair meets haunted happenings in the first charming, hilarious Haunted Guest House Mystery!

Newly divorced Alison Kerby wants a second chance for herself and her nine-year-old daughter, so she’s returned to her home town on the Jersey Shore to transform a fixer-upper into a charming—and hopefully profitable—guest house. But when a bump on the head leaves her seeing not only stars but spirits, Alison realizes the real challenge she’s facing is out of this world.
 
The two residing ghosts are Maxie Malone, the foul-tempered former owner of the house (who has definite opinions about Alison’s design plans), and Paul Harrison, a private eye who’d been working for Maxie—both died in the house on the same night. The official cause of death was suicide, but the ghosts insist they were murdered, and they need Alison to find out who killed them—or the next ghost in the guest house will be Alison herself...

Summertime Murders are RUFF

ALL BRAND NEW STORIES!

Looking for cool cozies for hot summer days? Then you'll love this purr-fectly paw-some cozy mystery boxed set from fourteen USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon best-selling authors.

We've pulled out all the stops with Summer Snoops Unleashed! Enjoy hours of fun sniffing out clues on sandy beaches, shimmering waterways, and at small-town celebrations in these brand-new stories full of wily sleuths, cagey plots, and un-fur-gettable tails!

Fetch your copy now to get these furr-ocious new cozy mysteries and woof it up with us!

They're howlingly good reads!

All preorders support best lives for pets!

Here’s a sampling of stories…
WSJ and USA Best Selling Author Judith Lucci – The Most Glittery Crime of the Year: The Jewel Heist – An Artzy Chicks Mystery
WSJ and USA Today Best Selling Author Anna Celeste Burke ¬- Radical Regatta! Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #4
WSJ & USA Today Best Selling Author Colleen Mooney - Fireworks, Forensics & Felonies
USA Today Best Selling Author Fiona Quinn - YOURS. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Amazon Best Selling Author Maria Grazia Swan - Pies, Lies and a Last Goodbye
USA Today Best Selling Author Kelly Hashway - You Can't Judge a Crime by its Aura
WSJ & USA Today Best Selling Author Kim Hunt Harris - Yankee Doodle Deadly: A Trailer Park Princess Novella
WSJ & USA Today Best Selling Author Susan Boles – Death in Mercy
Best Selling Author Amazon Lisa B. Thomas – Sharpe Pain: A Corpse in the Cabin
Amazon Best Selling Author Emily Selby - Death and Taxes on a Cloud
Amazon Best Selling Author Joanna Campbell Slan - Ruff Justice: Second Chance Adventure #5
WSJ and USA Today Best Selling Author Ava Mallory - High Heel Homicide: A Holly Woods Mystery Novella
Amazon Best Selling Author Chelsea Thomas - A Knead to Kill
WSJ and USA Today Best Selling Author Sam Cheever - Spunky Bumpkin

The basis for the blockbuster motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Shutter Island by New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane is a gripping and atmospheric psychological thriller where nothing is quite what it seems. The New York Times calls Shutter Island, “Startlingly original.” The Washington Post raves, “Brilliantly conceived and executed.” A masterwork of suspense and surprise from the author of Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone, Shutter Island carries the reader into a nightmare world of madness, mind control, and CIA Cold War paranoia and is unlike anything you’ve ever read before.

But what are we without dreams?

"The plot unfolds easily, swiftly, and never lets the readers' attention wane... After reading this one, it will be a real hardship to have to wait to see what happens next." ~ Feathered Quill Book Reviews (Awarded "The Children of Darkness" the Gold Medal in Science Fiction & Fantasy)

A thousand years ago the Darkness came—a terrible time of violence, fear, and social collapse when technology ran rampant. But the vicars of the Temple of Light brought peace, ushering in an era of blessed simplicity. For ten centuries they have kept the madness at bay with “temple magic,” and by eliminating forever the rush of progress that nearly caused the destruction of everything.

Childhood friends, Orah and Nathaniel, have always lived in the tiny village of Little Pond, longing for more from life but unwilling to challenge the rigid status quo. When their friend Thomas returns from the Temple after his “teaching”—the secret coming-of-age ritual that binds young men and women eternally to the Light—they barely recognize the broken and brooding young man the boy has become. Then when Orah is summoned as well, Nathaniel follows in a foolhardy attempt to save her.

In the prisons of Temple City, they discover a terrible secret that launches the three on a journey to find the forbidden keep, placing their lives in jeopardy, for a truth from the past awaits that threatens the foundation of the Temple. If they reveal that truth, they might once again release the potential of their people.

Yet they would also incur the Temple’s wrath as it is written: “If there comes among you a prophet saying, ‘Let us return to the darkness,’ you shall stone him, because he has sought to thrust you away from the Light.”

WINNER: Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, Summer 2015 - Best Book in SCIENCE FICTION

"A tightly executed first fantasy installment that champions the exploratory spirit." ~ Kirkus Reviews
 

See where it all began in the first phenomenal novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Black Dagger Brotherhood series... 

The only purebred vampire left on the planet and the leader of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, Wrath has a score to settle with the slayers who killed his parents centuries ago. But when his most trusted fighter is killed—orphaning a half-breed daughter unaware of her heritage or her fate—Wrath must put down his dagger and usher the beautiful female into another world.

Racked by a restlessness in her body that wasn’t there before, Beth Randall is helpless against the dangerously sexy man who comes to her at night with shadows in his eyes. His tales of the Brotherhood and blood frighten her. Yet his touch ignites a dawning new hunger—one that threatens to consume them both...

INCLUDES A NEW LETTER FROM J. R. WARD

#1 AMAZON BESTSELLER IN TIME TRAVEL ROMANCE

2018 B.R.A.G. MEDALLION HONOREE

SHORTLISTED IN THE 2016 CHATELAINE INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARDS

Victoria Smith's life seems dreary until someone knocks on a sealed door inside her London bookshop.  When Tori discovers it's not a ghost but a journalist from 1854, she accidentally strands him in 2014.  Intrigued by the dapper and crusading Charles Stratford, Tori offers to help him locate a pendant that will reopen the door to his century.  Even when their treasure hunt across London turns dangerous, Tori finds herself wishing that Charles could stay.  But after losing her family a decade before, can she risk loving someone again, especially a man from 1854?

Lured into the future by a mysterious pendant, Charles Stratford must track down its counterpart to unlock the door between Londons.  When the winsome Victoria Smith volunteers to join his search, Charles becomes smitten with the intrepid bookseller.  He also uncovers an ancient struggle between two underground societies and becomes entangled in their secret intrigues.  If Charles fails to return both pendants to 1854, he places his own London at risk.  But how can he succeed when it means saying farewell to Victoria in 2014?

From modern-day Soho to nineteenth-century Mayfair, The Never List takes readers on a whirlwind tour of Londons new and old as its time-crossed heroes search for a way to love each other within two centuries.  It is the first book in the Love Across Londons series which should be read in order.

Book One: The Never List

My Needs.
My Demands.
Your Pleasure.
You're Welcome.

She had one year left of college when our parents got married. And thanks to being raised in poverty, she needed help with her expenses.

My dad, being the benevolent billionaire, stepped up without question.

But there was a catch. She had to intern at the firm for a year. With me.

As her boss. Poor sweet little thing.

She has no clue what she’s up against, but she’ll figure it out soon.

I don’t play typical games, but the ones I do play, I always win.

And regardless of how taboo our relationship might become, I’m all in.

The reward is worth the risk.

I just hope she can keep up with my many demands.

From New York Times bestselling author Elin Hilderbrand, comes a novel about the many ways family can fill our lives with love...if they don't kill us first.

*New York Times bestseller*

It's Nantucket wedding season, also known as summer-the sight of a bride racing down Main Street is as common as the sun setting at Madaket Beach. The Otis-Winbury wedding promises to be an event to remember: the groom's wealthy parents have spared no expense to host a lavish ceremony at their oceanfront estate.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!

From the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and The Signature of All Things, a delicious novel of glamour, sex, and adventure, about a young woman discovering that you don't have to be a good girl to be a good person.

"A spellbinding novel about love, freedom, and finding your own happiness." - PopSugar

"Intimate and richly sensual, razzle-dazzle with a hint of danger." -USA Today

"Pairs well with a cocktail...or two." -TheSkimm

"Life is both fleeting and dangerous, and there is no point in denying yourself pleasure, or being anything other than what you are."

Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love.

In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance. Her affluent parents send her to Manhattan to live with her Aunt Peg, who owns a flamboyant, crumbling midtown theater called the Lily Playhouse. There Vivian is introduced to an entire cosmos of unconventional and charismatic characters, from the fun-chasing showgirls to a sexy male actor, a grand-dame actress, a lady-killer writer, and no-nonsense stage manager. But when Vivian makes a personal mistake that results in professional scandal, it turns her new world upside down in ways that it will take her years to fully understand. Ultimately, though, it leads her to a new understanding of the kind of life she craves - and the kind of freedom it takes to pursue it. It will also lead to the love of her life, a love that stands out from all the rest.

Now eighty-nine years old and telling her story at last, Vivian recalls how the events of those years altered the course of her life - and the gusto and autonomy with which she approached it. "At some point in a woman's life, she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time," she muses. "After that, she is free to become whoever she truly is." Written with a powerful wisdom about human desire and connection, City of Girls is a love story like no other.

A voyage of discovery, two remarkable women, and an extraordinary time and place enrich this New York Times bestselling novel by Tracy Chevalier, author of At the Edge of the Orchard and Girl With a Pearl Earring.

On the windswept, fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast, poor and uneducated Mary Anning learns that she has a unique gift: "the eye" to spot fossils no one else can see. When she uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near her home, she sets the religious community on edge, the townspeople to gossip, and the scientific world alight. After enduring bitter cold, thunderstorms, and landslips, her challenges only grow when she falls in love with an impossible man.

Mary soon finds an unlikely champion in prickly Elizabeth Philpot, a middle-class spinster who shares her passion for scouring the beaches. Their relationship strikes a delicate balance between fierce loyalty, mutual appreciation, and barely suppressed envy, but ultimately turns out to be their greatest asset.

Remarkable Creatures is a stunning historical novel that follows the story of two extraordinary 19th century fossil hunters who changed the scientific world forever.

Made a scapegoat for someone else’s failings, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to put the record straight?

When DS Dave Slater is unjustly suspended from duty after a botched operation, he soon gets bored sitting at home waiting to hear his fate. Then his boss unexpectedly asks him to investigate a case “discreetly” and before long Slater realises he has a chance to redeem himself. 
Joined by fellow scapegoat DS Norman Norman, Slater is plunged into a tangled web of corruption, blackmail, deception, and probably one of the most cunning murders ever. But can he and Norman wade through the ever-widening pool of suspects to find the killer?

Death of A Temptress is the first book in P.F Ford’s Slater and Norman Mystery series. If you like British Detectives, you’ll love this classic blend of character, suspense and humour.

Buy this book now and enjoy an entertaining mix of mystery and humour that never takes itself too seriously.

Brie is given a second chance at life until she's betrayed by the very person she thought would cherish her.