'Excellent' The Times 'Offers a fresh take on how to create your own balance, be more productive and feel fulfilled in the high-pressure social media age' Cosmopolitan, 12 BEST NEW BOOKS TO READ 'Serves some serious inspiration for the business-minded' Bustle, TOP DEBUT BOOKS OF 2021 In Working Hard, Hardly Working, entrepreneur Grace Beverley reflects on our new working world - where every hobby can be a hustle and social media is the lens through which we view ourselves and others - and offers a fresh take on how to create your own balance, be more productive and feel fulfilled. Insightful, curious and refreshingly honest, this book will open your eyes to what you want from your life and work - and then help you chart a path to get there.

Named a Fall Pick by Boston Globe, ELLE, Library Journal and MyDomain An eerie debut collection featuring missing parents, unrequited love, and other uncomfortable moments A man hangs from the ceiling of an art gallery. A woman spells out messages to her sister using her own hair. Children deemed “bad” are stolen from their homes. In Hardly Children, Laura Adamczyk’s rich and eccentric debut collection, familiar worlds—bars, hotel rooms, cities that could very well be our own—hum with uncanny dread. The characters in Hardly Children are keyed up, on the verge, full of desire. They’re lost, they’re in love with someone they shouldn’t be, they’re denying uncomfortable truths using sex or humor. They are children waking up to the threats of adulthood, and adults living with childlike abandon. With command, caution, and subtle terror, Adamczyk shapes a world where death and the possibility of loss always emerge. Yet the shape of this loss is never fully revealed. Instead, it looms in the periphery of these stories, like an uncomfortable scene viewed out of the corner of one’s eye.

Work hard until the job is done! That is the message Isaac hears repeatedly from his teacher, his coach, and his mom. They have to keep reminding him to finish his tasks because Isaac always – always – puts fun first. During math class, Isaac quits an assignment because a robot on a faraway computer monitor is too cool to ignore. At tennis practice, he stops doing drills because he wants to spice things up by whacking tennis balls so hard, they soar over the fence like out-of-the-park homers. When his mom promises a trip to the zoo if he cleans his room, Isaac crams, stuffs, and piles every dirty shirt, game, and candy wrapper into a closet and calls it clean. When the mess spills out, burying his mom, the zoo trip is delayed until he cleans his room the right way. Isaac is so busy looking to have fun, he ignores his responsibilities and all the work he needs to finish. Will it make any difference when a caring teacher introduces him to four simple steps that can help him focus and finish tasks? Or will Isaac keep making more work for himself by putting fun first? Are You Working Hard or Hardly Working? offers a timely message about the importance of having a strong work ethic and maintaining balance between work and play. A special tips page written specifically for parents and teachers offers helpful ideas on how to empower kids to stay focused and on task.

From Roxane Gay to Leslie Jamison, thirty brilliant writers share their timeless stories about the everlasting magic—and occasional misery—of living in the Big Apple, in a new edition of the classic anthology. In the revised edition of this classic collection, thirty writers share their own stories of loving and leaving New York, capturing the mesmerizing allure the city has always had for writers, poets, and wandering spirits. Their essays often begin as love stories do, with the passion of something newly discovered: the crush of subway crowds, the streets filled with manic energy, and the sudden, unblinking certainty that this is the only place on Earth where one can become exactly who she is meant to be. They also share the grief that comes like a gut-punch, when the grand metropolis loses its magic and the pressures of New York's frenetic life wear thin for even the most dedicated dwellers. As friends move away, rents soar, and love—still—remains just out of reach, each writer's goodbye is singular and universal, just like New York itself.

What’s the worst thing you can hear when you have a good idea at work? “That’s not how we do it here!” In their iconic bestseller Our Iceberg Is Melting, John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber used a simple fable about penguins to explain the process of lead­ing people through major changes. Now, ten years later, they’re back with another must-read story that will help any team or organization cope with their biggest challenges and turn them into exciting opportunities. Once upon a time a clan of meerkats lived in the Kalahari, a region in southern Africa. After years of steady growth, a drought has sharply reduced the clan’s resources, and deadly vulture attacks have increased. As things keep getting worse, the har­mony of the clan is shattered. The executive team quarrels about possible solutions, and sugges­tions from frontline workers face a soul-crushing response: “That’s not how we do it here!” So Nadia, a bright and adventurous meerkat, hits the road in search of new ideas to help her trou­bled clan. She discovers a much smaller group that operates very differently, with much more teamwork and agility. These meerkats have developed innova­tive solutions to find food and evade the vultures. But not everything in this small clan is as perfect as it seems at first. Can Nadia figure out how to combine the best of both worlds—a large, disciplined, well-managed clan and a small, informal, inspiring clan—before it’s too late? This book distills Kotter’s decades of experi­ence and award-winning research to reveal why organizations rise and fall, and how they can rise again in the face of adversity.

Isaac is a second grader who struggles with waiting to be recognized by an adult. He’s a little impatient, and this can get him in trouble at school and in the world. When a tough problem has him stuck, Isaac blurts out. With patience, Isaac’s mom guides him through the steps of getting somebody’s attention, and she helps him with the problem. Isaac understands, but needs some practice! Isaac’s adventures continue at the store, at home, and at school, where the adults are there to teach him even more skills like how to interrupt the right way!

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together