Here are 80 books that The Employees fans have personally recommended if you like
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I think about the positive identity development of Native youth all the time and not just because I am an educator and author. I love my Ojibwe language and culture, but I want to turn Native fiction on its head. We have so many stories about trauma and tragedy with characters who lament the culture that they were always denied. I want to show how vibrant and alive our culture still is. I want gripping stories where none of the Native characters are drug addicts, rapists, abused, or abusing others. I want to demonstrate the magnificence of our elders, the humor of our people, and the power of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Cherie Dimaline's book really spoke to me because, in addition to great story-telling, it sets Native people in a post-apocalyptic setting.
As Native people, we are so often portrayed as ancient rather than modern. So this work connected the ancient and the modern in a novel way. With relatable characters searching for family and community, it was relatable and real even in the world the book describes.
Humanity has nearly destroyed its world through global warming, but now an even greater evil lurks. The indigenous people of North America are being hunted and harvested for their bone marrow, which carries the key to recovering something the rest of the population has lost: the ability to dream. In this dark world, Frenchie and his companions struggle to survive as they make their way up north to the old lands. For now, survival means staying hidden-but what they don't know is that one of them holds the secret to defeating the marrow thieves.
Throughout my life, I’ve moved around quite a bit, and in the process, members of my family and I have encountered many wildly strange people and things. The universe itself is a wild place when you delve into the more exotic aspects: black holes, quantum physics, and measurable differences in subjective realities. It’s hard to say what the real boundaries are, and so I look for stories that stretch my ability to conceive what could be–and that help me find wonder in all the darkness and strangeness around me.
Yoko Ogawa’s dystopian, magical realist novel delves into the darkness underneath our pursuit of—if not the normal—the routine. We witness a protagonist’s world shrink day by day through legally enforced forgetting. As the situation on the isolated island in which the protagonist lives deteriorates, perhaps the most terrifying part is that she finds herself complicit in her own isolation and near-total lack of agency.
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020, an enthralling Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance from one of Japan's greatest writers.
'Beautiful... Haunting' Sunday Times 'A dreamlike story of dystopia' Jia Tolentino __________
Hat, ribbon, bird rose.
To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed.
When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately…
I grew up on a tiny peninsula in Downeast Maine, an evocative and rugged place, both lovely and haunting. As a girl, walking home late down gravel roads through an encompassing darkness I’ve found nowhere else, I sensed the world’s dangers long before I knew how to articulate them. Surrounded by woods, water, and unnerving quiet broken by the fox’s scream and rustling branches, I began to write. I sought out strange and unsettling books by Shirley Jackson and Stephen King (his home just a few towns away from mine) that left their mark. Storytelling became a way to process and explore what keeps me up at night.
As the title suggests, this book lingers like a disquieting dream. A mother to a toddler myself, I think of what the protagonist Amanda calls the “rescue distance” often – the ground between herself and her child, should something perilous occur.
This book distills maternal protectiveness and anxiety into something as potent as poison or as powerful as a curse. It makes me want to look over my shoulder, lock the doors, draw the blinds. It carries an air of contagion. I can think of few other reads that evoke such a visceral reaction with such subtle strokes.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2017
'The book I wish I had written' Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women and Animal
A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a remote Argentinian hospital. A boy named David sits beside her.
She's not his mother. He's not her child.
At David's ever more insistent prompting, Amanda recounts a series of events from the apparently recent past, a conversation that opens a chest of horrors. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family.
A chilling tale of maternal anxiety and ecological…
When King Priam's pregnant daughter was fleeing the sack of Troy, Stan was there. When Jesus of Nazareth was beaten and crucified, Stan was there - one crossover. He’s been a Hittite warrior, a Silk Road mercenary, a reluctant rebel in the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381, and an information peddler…
As a queer reader and writer of horror, I have little interest in anything that could be deemed “positive representation.” Horror is most compelling when it gets honest and ugly about the bad, selfish, cruel, or simply unwise choices people make when they’re truly scared–and that includes queer people. I love queer stories that aren’t primarily romantic or neatly resolved. I like messy groups of friends, toxic emotional entanglements, and family dynamics that don’t fit in a Hallmark card. These days there are lots of stories in other genres about queer people becoming their best selves, but horror also has space for us at our worst.
It’s rare to find a book that combines my two favorite horror subgenres–queer horror and parenting horror–but this book does that and more. With four different protagonists who are all, in one way or another, queer, this bizarre family saga delves into the surreality of grief and the questionable choices people make to protect themselves and the ones they love.
The true queerness of this novel goes beyond its characters’ various same-sex attractions and relationships; at its heart, it’s a queer story because it shows how we build families out of the rubble that’s left when the lives we expected to lead fall apart.
A "genuinely scary" horror debut written in "prose so beautiful you won't want to rush" about a boy who transforms into a monster, a monster who tries to be a man, and the people who love him in every form he takes (Ana Reyes)
Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago's lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family's decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstrilio…
As an organizational consultant, and a business writer, I’ve always been fascinated by Mark Twain’s comment that he would've written a shorter letter if he had more time. It’s a wonderful reminder that simplicity and clarity require hard work and won’t happen by itself. As part of the consulting team that worked with Jack Welch to transform GE in the 1990s, I saw firsthand that leaders actually have the power to simplify their organizations, and that it can make a huge difference. What they need is a playbook for how to do this, and that was my intention when I wrote Simply Effective. Since then I’ve seen “simplicity” become a driving force for business success.
Lisa Bodell is a fanatic about eliminating mundane and unnecessary tasks from your everyday routines.
In Why Simple Wins, Lisa provides a playbook to help you do just that – from getting control of your calendar to setting priorities to cutting back on meetings and emails. Having worked on some common clients with Lisa, I’ve seen the power of what she helps managers do – and I’ve seen how much synergy there is between our approaches.
It’s the kind of book that you’ll have no regrets about buying.
Imagine what you could do with the time you spend writing emails every day. Complexity is killing companies' ability to innovate and adapt, and simplicity is fast becoming the competitive advantage of our time. Why Simple Wins helps leaders and their teams move beyond the feelings of frustration and futility that come with so much unproductive work in today's corporate world to create a corporate culture where valuable, essential, meaningful work is the norm. By learning how to eliminate redundancies, communicate with clarity, and make simplification a habit, individuals and companies can begin to recognize which activities are time-sucks and…
I’m on a mission to cultivate creativity at work! After starting my career in the performing arts, I made a pivot to corporate life over 20 years ago and haven’t looked back. What I’ve discovered is how essential creativity is in any workplace, and how its impact on organizational culture is underrated. Effective leaders prioritize connection, creativity, and make culture a strategic priority. After learning from hundreds of artists, entrepreneurs, and business leaders, I wrote this book to highlight their stories—unpacking how they bring creativity to life in their work. My hope is readers leave with tools to spark more meaningful connection and creative work experiences.
I’m a longtime fan of the work BetterUp Labs has done in the research field of human performance, and this book, co-written by BetterUp’s Chief Innovation Officer Gabriella Rosen Kellerman, is a delightful collection of its insights.
With additional guidance from co-author Marty Seligman, commonly known as the father of positive psychology, Tomorrowmind offers an anthropological perspective on the evolution of our work experience and how our cultural expectations have shifted.
By shining a light on helpful case studies throughout, it demonstrates how we’ll need to change our individual mindsets and behaviors to operate effectively in the future of work. If you care about creativity and connection in your workplace, this will be an important addition for your bookshelf.
Thrive in your career with this radical, future-proofed approach to work in a world where automation, globalization, and downsizing are an urgent and threatening reality—from experts in workplace mental health, Gabriella Kellerman, CPO of BetterUp, and world-renowned psychologist Martin Seligman.
In recent years, workplace toxicity, industry volatility, and technology-driven turnover have threatened the psychological well-being of employees. When we can’t flourish at work, both personal success and corporate productivity suffer. As we sit on the cusp of some of the most turbulent economic changes in history, many of us wonder how we can not only survive but flourish in our…
Edge of the Known World is a near-future love and adventure story about a brilliant young refugee caught in era when genetic screening tests like 23AndMe make it impossible to hide a secret identity. The novel is distributed by Simon & Schuster. It is a USA Today Bestseller and 2024…
I’m a professor of Chinese studies, and I’m especially interested in what the close study of culture can reveal about aspects of contemporary Chinese life that are usually dominated by the perspectives of historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists. I’m fascinated not so much by how cultural practices reflect social change but by how they sometimes make it happen, particularly in societies where overt political action is blocked. As my book picks show, I’m intrigued by the inventiveness and drive of people who create culture, often new forms of culture, under conditions of oppression, exploitation, and duress.
In 2010, I became aware of appalling news stories about multiple suicides at the giant factory complexes in South China which churn out high-spec Apple devices. Shortly afterwards, a team of researchers went into the field to find out exactly what was happening at Foxconn, the vast multinational at the heart of this transpacific electronics supply chain.
On the one hand, the story they uncovered is about a predatory labor regime which relies on sweatshop brutality to get results. On the other, the authors document the vibrant cultural life that Foxconn factory workers have developed in order to survive and protest: poems, songs, open letters, photos, and videos.
As it exposes the murky origins of shiny gadgets, the book also spoke to me as a testament to the power and potential of committed activist scholarship.
Suicides, excessive overtime, hostility and violence on the factory floor in China. Drawing on vivid testimonies from rural migrant workers, student interns, managers and trade union staff, Dying for an iPhone is a devastating expose of two of the world's most powerful companies: Foxconn and Apple.
As the leading manufacturer of iPhones, iPads and Kindles, and employing one million workers in China alone, Taiwanese-invested Foxconn's drive to dominate global electronics manufacturing has aligned perfectly with China's goal of becoming the world leader in technology. This book reveals the human cost of that ambition and what our demands for the newest…
I've been studying people at work for over 40 years, starting as an undergraduate at Cornell’s School of Labor Relations. As a student, I got involved with the trade union movement in the US, and worked as an assembly-line worker and fruit picker on kibbutzim in Israel. These hands-on experiences made me want to understand and have an impact on the way people spend most of their working hours. I’ve collected survey data from literally thousands of workers in dozens of studies conducted around the world. I’ve published more articles in scholarly journals than I ever imagined possible. And while I’m still passionate about the study of work, I’ve yet to really understand it.
Aside from my research on rewards management, pro-social organizational behavior, and employee substance misuse, I’ve focused a lot of my attention on workplace incivility.
Bob Sutton’s book was one of the factors leading me to look at this topic. We’ve all encountered incivility at work and all know – at least implicitly – how it impacts us. Sutton’s book was one of the first to make sense – at least for me – of such behavior, not only by identify the “dirty dozen” (12 highly prevalent manifestations of workplace incivility), but also by detailing how damaging such behavior can be to individuals and the organizations employing them.
Aside from giving me insight into the prevalence and nature of employee MIS-management, this book was the start of a personal journey to discover some of the less obvious (but potentially more robust) implications of such problematic organizational behavior.
When the Harvard Business Review asked Robert Sutton for suggestions for its annual list of Breakthrough Ideas, he told them that the best business practice he knew of was 'the no asshole rule'. Sutton's piece became one of the most popular articles ever to appear in the HBR. Spurred on by the fear and despair that people expressed, the tricks they used to survive with dignity in asshole-infested places, the revenge stories that made him laugh out loud and the other small wins that they celebrated against mean-spirited people, Sutton was persuaded to write THE NO ASSHOLE RULE. He believes…
Look around us—DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) is under attack. From challenges to the Voting Rights Act and bans on books to the suppression of history and education, protections and rights are being rolled back. We must all recognize that systemic racism, patriarchy, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination harm not only the oppressed but also those who ostensibly benefit from these structures. It is time to move beyond passive or performative allyship and become proactive Disruptors—individuals willing to stand up and use their voices to advocate for equity and mutual respect.
The ways in which we lead must be examined in order to lead with
compassion and empathy. Traditionally, leaders have used a top-down approach to leadership, very
regimented and militaristic, but we are talking about people not war. So how can one lead a people,
an organization, in a way that is efficient and allows for growth?
Koenig’s approach is less a “heroic”
leadership style but one that is human-centered, seeing humility as strength is key to achieving
goals in a multicultural and complex society.
“A game-changing book that redefines leadership in the modern world.” ―Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, Thinkers50 #1 Executive Coach and New York Times bestselling author of The Earned Life, Triggers, and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
When veteran executive coach, professor, and ultraendurance champion Urs Koenig signed up to be a NATO peacekeeping commander and United Nations peacekeeper in his fifties, he thought he knew a thing or two about leadership.
What he discovered was a new way of thinking that replaces the top-down, “heroic” leadership of the past with a more human-centered approach that views humility as a…
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, this brilliant 17th century nun flew through Mexico City on the breeze of poetry and philosophy. She met with princes of the Church, and with the royalty of Spain and Mexico. Then she met a stunning, powerful woman with lavender eyes, la Vicereine Maria…
Due to the inopportune circumstances of my birth (i.e., not being born into generational wealth), I have sadly been forced to join the working world instead of being allowed to live full-time in my imagination. Happily, the situation has allowed me to collect a treasure trove of workplace gossip. Described by my coworkers as “a great listener,” “overly curious,” and “most likely to start a cult,” the things I have heard and seen in a STEM-related office would truly leave an HR rep gagged. However, I have chosen to channel my penchant for mischief and genetic predisposition for drama into writing office romance novels instead of destroying careers.
Like many people, I would vastly prefer to work from home in my pajamas with reality TV on in the background while I paint my nails and jiggle my mouse from time to time so everyone thinks I am super busy being important on Zoom. However, if I am going to be forced into the office, then give me a coworker like Joshua Templeman: tall, handsome, brooding. Extra points if he calls me cute nicknames and teases me all day.
Since I can only dream about a handsome coworker (sorry, current coworkers, step it up!), I deeply enjoyed losing myself in this book by Sally Thorne. It’s the gold standard of a workplace enemies-to-lovers romance, with all the hateful banter, steamy looks, and coworker hookups that would have a real-life HR rep ready to retire.
Debut author Sally Thorne bursts on the scene with a hilarious and sexy workplace comedy all about that thin, fine line between hate and love. Nemesis (n.) 1) An opponent or rival whom a person cannot best or overcome. 2) A person's undoing 3) Joshua Templeman Lucy Hutton has always been certain that the nice girl can get the corner office. She's charming and accommodating and prides herself on being loved by everyone at Bexley & Gamin. Everyone except for coldly efficient, impeccably attired, physically intimidating Joshua Templeman. And the feeling is mutual. Trapped in a shared office together forty…
