#131 The Case of the Two-Cent CandyYears ago, I wrote about a retail store in the Palo Alto environs a good one, which had a box of two-cent candies at the checkout. I subsequently remember that "little" parting gesture of the two-cent candy as a symbol of all that is Excellent at that store. Dozens of people who have attended seminars of mine from retailers to bankers to plumbing-supply-house owners have come up to remind me, sometimes 15 or 20 years later, of "the two-cent candy story," and to tell me how it had a sizable impact on how they did business, metaphorically and in fact.Well, the Two-Cent Candy Phenomenon has struck again with oomph and in the most unlikely of places.For years Singapore's "brand" has more or less been Southeast Asia's "place that works." Its legendary operational efficiency in all it does has attracted businesses of all sorts to set up shop there. But as "the rest" in the geographic neighborhood closed the efficiency gap, and China continued to rise-race-soar, Singapore decided a couple of years ago to "rebrand" itself as not only a place that works but also as an exciting, "with it" city. (I was a participant in an early rebranding conference that also featured the likes of the late Anita Roddick, Deepak Chopra, and Infosys founder and superman N. R. Narayana Murthy.)Singapore's fabled operating efficiency starts, as indeed it should, at ports of entry the airport being a prime example. From immigration to baggage claim to transportation downtown, the services are unmatched anywhere in the world for speed and efficiency.Saga . . . Immigration services in Thailand, three days before a trip to Singapore, were a pain. ("Memorable.") And entering Russia some months ago was hardly a walk in the park, either. To be sure, and especially after 9/11, entry to the United States has not been a process you'd mistake for arriving at Disneyland, nor marked by an attitude that shouted "Welcome, honored guest."Singapore immigration services, on the other hand:The entry form was a marvel of simplicity. The lines were short, very short, with more than adequate staffing.The process was simple and unobtrusive.And:The immigration officer could have easily gotten work at Starbucks; she was all smiles and courtesy.And:Yes!Yes!And . . . yes!There was a little candy jar at each Immigration portal!The "candy jar message" in a dozen ways:"Welcome to Singapore, Tom!! We are absolutely beside ourselves with delight that you have decided to come here!"Wow!Wow!Wow!Ask yourself . . . now:What is my (personal, department, project, restaurant, law firm) "Two-Cent Candy"?Does every part of the process of working with us/me include two-cent candies?Do we, as a group, "think two-cent candies"?Operationalizing: Make "two-centing it" part and parcel of "the way we do business around here." Don't go light on the so-called substance but do remember that . . . perception is reality . . . and perception is shaped by two-cent candies as much as by that so-called hard substance.Start: Have your staff collect "two-cent candy stories" for the next two weeks in their routine "life" transactions. Share those stories. Translate into "our world." And implement.Repeat regularly.Forever.(Recession or no recession you can afford two cents.)(In fact, it is a particularly Brilliant Idea for a recession you doubtless don't maximize Two-Cent Opportunities. And what opportunities they are.)

A fascinating exploration of the contents of Agatha Christie's seventy-three private notebooks, including illustrations and two unpublished Poirot stories When Agatha Christie died in 1976, at age eighty-five, she had become the world's most popular author. With sales of more than two billion copies worldwide, in more than one hundred countries, she had achieved the impossible more than one book every year since the 1920s, every one a bestseller.So prolific was Agatha Christie's output sixty-six crime novels, twenty plays, six romance novels under a pseudonym and more than one hundred and fifty short stories it was often claimed that she had a photographic memory. Was this trueOr did she resort over those fifty-five years to more mundane methods of working out her ingenious crimesFollowing the death of Agatha's daughter, Rosalind, at the end of 2004, a remarkable legacy was revealed. Unearthed among her affairs at the family home of Greenway were Agatha Christie's private notebooks, seventy-three handwritten volumes of notes, lists and drafts outlining all her plans for her many books, plays and stories. Buried in this treasure trove, all in her unmistakable handwriting, are revelations about her famous books that will fascinate anyone who has ever read or watched an Agatha Christie story.How did the infamous twist in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd really come aboutWhich very famous Poirot novel started life as an adventure for Miss MarpleWhich books were designed to have completely differ-ent endings, and what were theyWhat were the plot ideas that she considered but rejected?Full of details she was too modest to reveal in her own autobiography, this remarkable new book includes a wealth of excerpts and pages reproduced directly from the notebooks and her letters, plus, for the first time, two newly discovered complete Hercule Poirot short stories never before published.

He's endearing.He's funny.He's a survivor.Here comes Hooper, one plucky, spunky dog whose warm spirit and goofy personality are irresistible. Hooper tells his own dramatic rescue tale after being left homeless in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and taking a daring trip from New Orleans to New York to meet his new family. He tells of the terrifying force of Katrina, his trials in the shelter, and being the new dog on the block in a city far from home. As Hooper struggles to find his place, he learns to overcome his fear of water and faces down feisty squirrels as well as the resident bully and top dog in his new neighborhood. In a moving tale of adventure and triumph based on a true story, meet this tenacious puppy who makes an incredible journey in search of home.

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer reveals how we all can prevent ourselves from being victimised by others and begin to operate from a position of power at the centre of our own lives. Asserting that we alone are responsible for how much we will be controlled by others, Dyer offers his practical plan for developing new attitudes toward the most common sources of victimisation and manipulation, such as family members and authority figures in the workplace. For example, families can be tremendously coercive and demanding, but they can also be an immensely rewarding part of your life. Dyer shows how to cope with the negative side and contribute to the positive. Also, in their working life many people stay in unfulfilling jobs because they feel constrained by their present experience or because they fear change. Dyer shows that by being enthusiastic and flexible, you can find the work that makes you happy. In this modern day classic, Dyer shows you how to stop being the victim in all aspects of everyday life and to take charge of your destiny.

Finding the perfect house is never easy. Rebuilding one from a crumbling pile to say nothing of making it into a home is even harder.With their infant son in tow, David Giffels and his wife comb the environs of Akron, Ohio, in search of just the right house for their burgeoning family. Running through David's head the whole time are the lyrics of a Replacements song, ". . . Look me in the eye, then tell me that I'm satisfied," and it gives all the more purpose to their quest. But nothing seems right . . . until they spot a beautiful, decaying Gilded Age mansion. A former rubber industry executive's domain, the once grand residence lacks functional plumbing and electricity, leaks rain like a cartoon shack, and is infested with all manner of wildlife. But for a young man at a coming-of-age crossroads "suspended between a perpetual youth and an inevitable adulthood" the challenge is exactly the allure.All the Way Home follows Giffels's funny, poignant, and confounding journey as he and his wife and a colorful collection of helpers turn a money pit into a house that will complete their family. Nothing could prepare them for a home restoration epic that includes evicting squatters (both four- and two-legged), battling an invading wisteria vine, hunting a ghost, and discovering thousands of dollars in hidden Depression-era cash. But the story's heart lies deeper, in an unexpected series of personal hardships that call into question what "home" really means, and what it means to grow up.Written with the humor and insight of Bill Bryson and John Grogan, All the Way Home is the engaging tale of a young father's struggle to restore a house and find his way . . . without losing himself.

Lucette Lagnado's father, Leon, is a successful Egyptian businessman and boulevardier who, dressed in his signature white sharkskin suit, makes deals and trades at Shepherd's Hotel and at the dark bar of the Nile Hilton. After the fall of King Farouk and the rise of the Nasser dictatorship, Leon loses everything and his family is forced to flee, abandoning a life once marked by beauty and luxury to plunge into hardship and poverty, as they take flight for any country that would have them.A vivid, heartbreaking, and powerful inversion of the American dream, Lucette Lagnado's unforgettable memoir is a sweeping story of family, faith, tradition, tragedy, and triumph set against the stunning backdrop of Cairo, Paris, and New York.Winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and hailed by the New York Times Book Review as a "brilliant, crushing book" and the New Yorker as a memoir of ruin "told without melodrama by its youngest survivor," The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit recounts the exile of the author's Jewish Egyptian family from Cairo in 1963 and her father's heroic and tragic struggle to survive his "riches to rags" trajectory.

The acclaimed author of The Space Between Us and The Weight of Heaven returns with a breathtaking, skillfully wrought story of four women and the unbreakable ties they share. As university students in late 1970s Bombay, Armaiti, Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta were inseparable. Spirited and unconventional, they challenged authority and fought for a better world. But much has changed over the past thirty years. Following different paths, the quartet drifted apart, the day-to-day demands of work and family tempering the revolutionary fervor they once shared. Then comes devastating news: Armaiti, who moved to America, is gravely ill and wants to see the old friends she left behind. For Laleh, reunion is a bittersweet reminder of unfulfilled dreams and unspoken guilt. For Kavita, it is an admission of forbidden passion. For Nishta, it is the promise of freedom from a bitter fundamentalist husband. And for Armaiti, it is an act of acceptance, of letting go on her own terms even if her ex-husband and daughter do not understand her choices.In the course of their journey to reconnect, Armaiti, Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta must confront the truths of their lives—acknowledge long-held regrets, face painful secrets and hidden desires, and reconcile their idealistic past and their compromised present. And they will have to decide what matters most, a choice that may just help them reclaim the extraordinary world they once found. Exploring the enduring bonds of friendship and the power of love to change lives, and offering an unforgettable portrait of modern India—a nation struggling to bridge economic, religious, gender, and generational divides—The World We Found is a dazzling masterwork from the remarkable Thrity Umrigar.

What do you do in your teenage years when you realize what your parents taught you wasn't enoughYou must go out and find books and poetry and pop songs and bad heroes—and build yourself.It's 1990. Johanna Morrigan, fourteen, has shamed herself so badly on local TV that she decides that there's no point in being Johanna anymore and reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde—fast-talking, hard-drinking gothic hero and full-time Lady Sex Adventurer. She will save her poverty-stricken Bohemian family by becoming a writer—like Jo in Little Women, or the Bront?s—but without the dying-young bit.By sixteen, she's smoking cigarettes, getting drunk, and working for a music paper. She's writing pornographic letters to rock stars, having?all?the kinds of sex with all the kinds of men, and eviscerating bands in reviews of 600 words or less.But what happens when Johanna realizes she's built Dolly with a fatal flawIs a box full of records, a wall full of posters, and a head full of paperbacks enough to build a girl after all?Imagine The Bell Jar—written by Rizzo from Grease. How to Build a Girl is a funny, poignant, and heartbreakingly evocative story of self-discovery and invention, as only Caitlin Moran could tell it.

The compelling drama of American herbologist Rosita Arvigo's quest to preserve the knowledge of Don Elijio Panti, one of the last surviving and most respected traditional healers in the rainforest of Belize.

A mesmerizing portrait of 1950s hypocrisy and unexpected love, from a powerful new voiceIt is 1957, and Lewis Aldridge, straight out of prison, is journeying back to his home in Waterford, a suburban town outside London. He is nineteen years old, and his return will have dramatic consequences not just for his family, but for the whole community.A decade earlier, his father's homecoming has a very different effect. The war is over and Gilbert has been demobilized. He reverts easily to suburban life—cocktails at six-thirty, church on Sundays—but his wife and young son resist the stuffy routine. Lewis and his mother escape to the woods for picnics, just as they did in wartime days. Nobody is surprised that Gilbert's wife counters convention, but they are all shocked when, after one of their jaunts, Lewis comes back without her.Not far away, Kit Carmichael keeps watch. She has always understood more than most, not least from what she is dealt by her own father's hand. Lewis's grief and burgeoning rage are all too plain, and Kit makes a private vow to help. But in her attempts to set them both free, she fails to foresee the painful and horrifying secrets that must first be forced into the open. In this brilliant debut, Sadie Jones tells the story of a boy who refuses to accept the polite lies of a tightly knit community that rejects love in favor of appearances. Written with nail-biting suspense and cinematic pacing, The Outcast is an emotionally powerful evocation of postwar provincial English society and a remarkably uplifting testament to the redemptive powers of love and understanding.

Low-life writer and unrepentant alcoholic Henry Chinaski was born to survive. After decades of slacking off at low-paying dead-end jobs, blowing his cash on booze and women, and scrimping by in flea-bitten apartments, Chinaski sees his poetic star rising at last. Now, at fifty, he is reveling in his sudden rock-star life, running three hundred hangovers a year, and maintaining a sex life that would cripple Casanova.With all of Bukowski's trademark humor and gritty, dark honesty, this 1978 follow-up to Post Office and Factotum is an uncompromising account of life on the edge.

In this sparkling collection, award-winning writer Rishi Reddi weaves a multigenerational tapestry of interconnected lives, depicting members of an Indian American community struggling to balance the demands of tradition with the allure of Western life.In "Lord Krishna," a teenager is offended when his evangelical history teacher likens the Hindu deity to Satan, but ultimately forgives the teacher against his father's wishes. In the title story, "Karma," an unemployed professor rescues birds in downtown Boston after his wealthy brother kicks him out of his home. In "Justice Shiva Ram Murthy," which appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2005, an irascible retired judge reconnects with a childhood friend while adjusting to a new life with his daughter and her American husband. In "Devadasi," a beautiful young woman raised in the United States travels back to India and challenges the sexual confines of her culture. And in "Bangles," a widow decides to return to her native village to flee her son's off-putting American ways.Set mostly in the Boston area, with side trips to an isolated immigrant community in Wichita, Kansas, and the characters' hometown of Hyderabad, India, Karma and Other Stories introduces a luminous new voice.

Women long for the kind of beauty and health that can only come with clean cells. Yet many women find detox plans difficult to follow and are disappointed with the results. In her ten years of working privately with celebrity clients at leading Manhattan spas, Natalia Rose has discovered that traditional detox plans don't work for adult women because their microbial balance is completely out of whack. In fact, doing the wrong kind of detox can make their symptoms even worse!Here is the solution. Rose has formulated a very specific detox pre*ion for women that is easy to follow and gentle on the system, yet yields fantastic results that are both immediate and lasting. In Detox for Women, she brings you her powerful step-by-step plan that will help you shed weight, look years younger, and radiate energy in only 28 days. Like Rose's celebrity clients, you will love this plan! Rose steers readers away from traditional detox fare like fruit and nuts and cautions against eating too much raw food too soon. And while many detox programs do not allow you to eat at all, during the next 28 days you will enjoy Cooked foods that are easy to digest Treats like dark chocolate and wineRecipes that hark back to favorite foods like pumpkin pie and guacamoleSunshine for Breakfast! Rose's own elixir for health and beautyGreat restaurants—this plan can even be tailored for eating out!You will also luxuriate in relaxing baths, get plenty of fresh air, and enjoy meals that are simple to prepare, beautiful to look at, and delicious to eat. Like Rose's clients, you will probably also find that this way of living is so easy and rewarding that you will even want to make permanent changes after the 28 days are over.With inspiring stories from real women, Natalia Rose doesn't just give you a detox pre*ion but also real hope for the kind of transformation you have always wanted.

In his final novel, which he considered his most important, Aldous Huxley transports us to the remote Pacific island of Pala, where an ideal society has flourished for 120 years. Inevitably, this island of bliss attracts the envy and enmity of the surrounding world. A conspiracy is underway to take over Pala, and events are set in motion when an agent of the conspirators, a newspaperman named Faranby, is shipwrecked there. What Faranby doesn't expect is how his time with the people of Pala will revolutionize all his values and—to his amazement—give him hope.

It's never too late to have a good divorce Based on two decades of groundbreaking research, The Good Divorce presents the surprising finding that in more than fifty percent of divorces couples end their marriages, yet preserve their families. Dr. Ahrons shows couples how they can move beyond the confusing, even terrifying early stages of breakup and learn to deal with the transition from a nuclear to a "binuclear" family--one that spans two households and continues to meet the needs of children. The Good Divorce makes an important contribution to the ongoing "family values" debate by dispelling the myth that divorce inevitability leaves emotionally troubles children in its wake. It is a powerful tonic for the millions of divorcing and long-divorces parents who are tired of hearing only the damage reports. It will make us change the way we think about divorce and the way we divorce, reconfirming our commitment to children and families.

For seven years, Alison Arngrim played a wretched, scheming, selfish, lying, manipulative brat on one of TV history's most beloved series. Though millions of Little House on the Prairie viewers hated Nellie Oleson and her evil antics, Arngrim grew to love her character and the freedom and confidence Nellie inspired in her.In Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, Arngrim describes growing up in Hollywood with her eccentric parents: Thor Arngrim, a talent manager to Liberace and others, whose appetite for publicity was insatiable, and legendary voice actress Norma MacMillan, who played both Gumby and Casper the Friendly Ghost. She recalls her most cherished and often wickedly funny moments behind the scenes of Little House: Michael Landon's "unsaintly" habit of not wearing underwear; how she and Melissa Gilbert (who played her TV nemesis, Laura Ingalls) became best friends and accidentally got drunk on rum cakes at 7-Eleven; and the only time she and Katherine MacGregor (who played Nellie's mom) appeared in public in costume, provoking a posse of elementary schoolgirls to attack them.Arngrim relays all this and more with biting wit, but she also bravely recounts her life's challenges: her struggle to survive a history of traumatic abuse, depression, and paralyzing shyness; the "secret" her father kept from her for twenty years; and the devastating loss of her "Little House husband" and best friend, Steve Tracy, to AIDS, which inspired her second career in social and political activism. Arngrim describes how Nellie Oleson taught her to be bold, daring, and determined, and how she is eternally grateful to have had the biggest little bitch on the prairie to show her the way.

In her most important book yet, Dr. Laura Schlessinger shows men and women that they can have a Good Life no matter how Bad their Childhood was.For each of us, there is a connection between our early family dynamics and experiences and our current attitudes and decisions. Many of the people Dr. Laura has helped did not realize how their histories impacted their adult lives, or how their choices in people, repetitive situations, and decisions -- even their emotional reactions -- were connected to those early negative experiences, playing a major role in their current unhappiness. Dr. Laura will help you realize that no matter what circumstances you came from or currently live in, you are ultimately responsible for how you react to them. The acceptance of this basic truth is the source of your power to secure the Good Life you long for. In her signature straightforward style, with real-life examples, Dr. Laura shows you what you will gain by not being satisfied with an identity as a victim, or even as a survivor -- you should strive to be a victor! In Bad Childhood -- Good Life, Dr. Laura will guide you to accept the truth of the assaults on your psyche and soul, understand your unique coping style and how it impacts your daily thoughts and actions, and help you embrace a life of more peace and happiness.

One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung's powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.

For ten years, Norma has been the on-air voice of consolation and hope for the Indians in the mountains and the poor from the barrios a people broken by war's violence. As the host of Lost City Radio, she reads the names of those who have disappeared those whom the furiously expanding city has swallowed. Through her efforts lovers are reunited and the lost are found. But in the aftermath of the decadelong bloody civil conflict, her own life is about to forever change thanks to the arrival of a young boy from the jungle who provides a cryptic clue to the fate of Norma's vanished husband.

One of our most accomplished literary artists, John Crowley imagines the novel the haunted Romantic poet Lord Byron never penned ...but very well might have. Saved from destruction, read, and annotated by Byron's own abandoned daughter, Ada, the manu* is rediscovered in our time -- and almost not recognized. Lord Byron's Novel is the story of a dying daughter's attempt to understand the famous father she longed for -- and the young woman who, by learning the secret of Byron's manu* and Ada's devotion, reconnects with her own father, driven from her life by a crime as terrible as any of which Byron himself was accused.

From the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of Serena and The Cove, thirty-four of his finest short stories, collected in one volumeNo one captures the complexities of Appalchia—a rugged, brutal landscape of exquisite beauty—as evocatively and indelibly as author and poet Ron Rash. Winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, two O. Henry prizes, and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, Rash brilliantly illuminates the tensions between the traditional and the modern, the old and the new south, tenderness and violence, man and nature. Though his focus is regional, the themes of Rash's work are universal, striking an emotional chord that resonates deep within each of our lives.Something Rich and Strange showcases this acclaimed master's artistry and craftsmanship in thirty-two stories culled from previously published collections and two available for the first time in book form: "Outlaws" and "Shiloh." Each work of short fiction demonstrates Rash's dazzling ability to evoke the heart and soul of this land and its people—men and women inexorably tethered to the geography that defines and shapes them. Filled with suspense and myth, hope and heartbreak, and told in language that flows like "shimmering, liquid poetry" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), Something Rich and Strange is an iconic work from an American literary virtuoso.