They all sold their life insurance policies to the same company— and now they' re all dead. Mac and Oliver are on the case. On a beautiful spring morning in Washington, D.C., a high-profile attorney is found dead in his office. McDermott “ Mac” Burke and Oliver Shaw, homicide investigators for the Metropolitan Police Department, are called to investigate. There appear to be no signs of foul play, but there is also no obvious sign of a natural cause of death. The detectives are perplexed until the medical examiner notices a tiny pin prick on the lawyer' s neck and theorizes that the man was injected with succinylcholine— aka “ sux” — which is a common horse tranquilizer that dissipates quickly in the body. As Mac and Oliver begin to look further, they discover that the lawyer had sold his life insurance policy to a large viatical company. Then, they realize that more deaths under mysterious circumstances have occurred among those who' ve sold their policies to the same company. With mere coincidence seeming unlikely, Mac and Oliver dive headfirst into a now complex and far-reaching murder investigation— if they don' t uncover what' s really happening, many more lives could be at stake. Perfect for fans of Robert Dugoni and John Sandford

Criticizes the system of motivating through reward, offering arguments for motivating people by working with them instead of doing things to them.

A conductor succumbs to cyanide at the famed Venice opera house, in the first mystery in the New York Times–bestselling, award-winning series. During intermission at the famed La Fenice opera house in Venice, Italy, a notoriously difficult and widely disliked German conductor is poisoned—and suspects abound. Guido Brunetti, a native Venetian, sets out to unravel the mystery behind the high-profile murder. To do so, he calls on his knowledge of Venice, its culture, and its dirty politics. Along the way, he finds the crime may have roots going back decades—and that revenge, corruption, and even Italian cuisine may play a role. “One of the most exquisite and subtle detective series ever.” —The Washington Post “A brilliant writer . . . an immensely likable police detective who takes every murder to heart.” —The New York Times Book Review

Rates of organ donation lag far behind the increasing need. At the start of 2006, more than 90,000 people were waiting to receive a solid organ (kidney, liver, lung, pancreas, heart, or intestine). Organ Donation examines a wide range of proposals to increase organ donation, including policies that presume consent for donation as well as the use of financial incentives such as direct payments, coverage of funeral expenses, and charitable contributions. This book urges federal agencies, nonprofit groups, and others to boost opportunities for people to record their decisions to donate, strengthen efforts to educate the public about the benefits of organ donation, and continue to improve donation systems. Organ Donation also supports initiatives to increase donations from people whose deaths are the result of irreversible cardiac failure. This book emphasizes that all members of society have a stake in an adequate supply of organs for patients in need, because each individual is a potential recipient as well as a potential donor.

In Dying to Work, Jonathan Karmel raises our awareness of unsafe working conditions with accounts of workers who were needlessly injured or killed on the job. Based on heart-wrenching interviews Karmel conducted with injured workers and surviving family members across the country, the stories in this book are introduced in a way that helps place them in a historical and political context and represent a wide survey of the American workplace, including, among others, warehouse workers, grocery store clerks, hotel housekeepers, and river dredgers. Karmel’s examples are portraits of the lives and dreams cut short and reports of the workplace incidents that tragically changed the lives of everyone around them. Dying to Work includes incidents from industries and jobs that we do not commonly associate with injuries and fatalities and highlights the risks faced by workers who are hidden in plain view all around us. While exposing the failure of safety laws that leave millions of workers without compensation and employers without any meaningful incentive to protect their workers, Karmel offers the reader some hope in the form of policy suggestions that may make American workers safer and employers more accountable. This is a book for anyone interested in issues of worker health and safety, and it will also serve as the cornerstone for courses in public policy, community health, labor studies, business ethics, regulation and safety, and occupational and environmental health policy.