'The woman is no good to me. Who'll have her?' Michael Henchard is an out-of-work hay-trusser who gets drunk at a local fair and impulsively sells his wife Susan and baby daughter. Eighteen years later Susan and her daughter seek him out, only to discover that he has become the most prominent man in Casterbridge. Henchard attempts to make amends for his youthful misdeeds but his unchanged impulsiveness clouds his relationships in love as well as his fortunes in business. A...

'If ever I forget your name let me forget home and heaven...But no, no, my love, I never can forget 'ee; for you was a good man, and did good things!' Love, and the erratic heart, are at the centre of Hardy's 'woodland story'. Set in the beautiful Blackmoor Vale, The Woodlanders concerns the fortunes of Giles Winterborne, whose love for the well-to-do Grace Melbury is challenged by the arrival of the dashing and dissolute doctor, Edred Fitzpiers. When the mysterio...

This book explores Customer Value-centered Management as a modern corporate approach, emphasizing its dual nature: data-driven yet comprehensive. Facing heightened time pressure and uncertainty, management grapples with decision-making challenges amidst VUCA conditions. While complexity rises, tools like big data and AI offer decision-making solutions. Customer centricity, epitomized by Amazon's success, emerges as pivotal, with customer value serving as the linchpin in relationship market...

KYLIE: Mexico? What a nightmare! I should be putting the finishing touches on my valedictorian speech. Graduation is TODAY! Wait! Is this a wedding band on my finger??MAX: It started with Kylie's laptop and a truck full of stolen electronics and it ended in Ensenada. It was hot, the way she broke us out like some chick in an action movie. But now we're stranded here, with less than twenty-four hours before graduation.WILL: Saving Kylie Flores from herself is kind of a full-...

Life seems to have it in for Franny Flanders.Her best friends aren’t speaking, her parents just divorced, and her hippie grandmother has moved in. The only karma Franny’s got is bad karma.Then Franny gets her hands on a box of magic recipes that could fix all of her problems. It could even change the world! Finally, life is looking up.But Franny is about to learn that magic and karma aren’t to be played with. When you mess with the universe, it can bite back in unex...

The true story of super-criminal Jon Roberts, star of the documentary Cocaine Cowboys.American Desperado is Roberts’ no-holds-barred account of being born into Mafia royalty, witnessing his first murder at the age of seven, becoming a hunter-assassin in Vietnam, returning to New York to become--at age 22--one of the city’s leading nightclub impresarios, then journeying to Miami where in a few short years he would rise to become the Medellin Cartel...

Theodora's Locket is a full-cast, faith-based, family-friendly audio drama inspired by the 1909 story "Christmas at Red Butte" by L.M. Montgomery. In this adaptation, an 11-person international cast brings you a rendition of this tale in a way it hasn't been told before. Fresh new dialogue, scenes that will pull at your heart strings, amazing soundscapes, and beautiful music bring you inside the story. Our production remains true to the original story and demonstrates how a selfless act, i...

Married and living in England under the name Michael Schaeffer, the assassin known as the Butcher's Boy is the target of a Mafia hit team sent to exact revenge for his deadly campaign against the Balacontano family years earlier. Schaeffer kills all three attackers, but he knows more will come and needs to find whoever sent them to end it once and for all.Soon Elizabeth Waring, now high up in the Organized Crime Division of the Justice Department, receives a surprise late-night vis...

When Phil Kramer is shot dead on a deserted suburban street in the middle of the night, his wife, Emily, is left with an emptied bank account and a lot of questions. How could Phil leave her penniless? What was he going to do with the money? And, most of all, who was he if he wasn't the man she thought she married?Jerry Hobart has some questions of his own. It's none of his business why he was hired to kill Phil Kramer. But now that he's been ordered to take out Kramer's widow, he ...

Six years ago, Jack Till helped Wendy Harper disappear. But now her ex-boyfriend and former business partner, Eric Fuller, is being framed for her presumed murder in an effort to smoke her out, and Till must find her before tango-dancing assassins Paul and Sylvie Turner do.The Turners are merely hired to do a job, though, and prefer to remain anonymous. When they find that a middleman has let the true employer know their identities, finishing the job is no longer enough. Their fee ...

This book examines volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) and addresses the need for broader knowledge and application of new concepts and frameworks to deal with unpredictable and rapid changing situations. The premises of VUCA can shape all aspects of an organization. To cover all areas, the book is divided into six sections. Section 1 acts as an introduction to VUCA and complexity. It reviews ways to manage complexity, while providing examples for tools and approaches ...