Chronicles and celebrates the unusual success story of Harvard Business School's class of 1949, which includes more corporate presidents, policymakers, CEO's, and millionaires than any other comparable group

The Big Time: Harvard Business School's Most Successful Class--And How It Shaped America

Business & Money

SHAMES, Laurence

Management & Leadership

Harpercollins

Some people are born to lead and destined to teach by the example of living life to the fullest, and facing death with uncommon honesty and courage. Peter Barton was that kind of person.
Driven by the ideals that sparked a generation, he became an overachieving Everyman, a risk-taker who showed others what was possible. Then, in the prime of his life—hugely successful, happily married, and the father of three children—Peter faced the greatest of all challenges. Diagnosed with cancer, he began a journey that was not only frightening and appalling but also full of wonder and discovery.
With unflinching candor and even surprising humor, Not Fade Away finds meaning and solace in Peter's confrontation with mortality. Celebrating life as it dares to stare down death, Peter's story addresses universal hopes and fears, and redefines the quietly heroic tasks of seeking clarity in the midst of pain, of breaking through to personal faith, and of achieving peace after bold and sincere questioning.

Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived

Parenting & Relationships

Harper-perennial

Scavenger Reef

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Pan Books

Sunburn

Thrillers & Suspense

Hyperion

Welcome to Paradise

Before mild-mannered furniture salesman Al Tuschman left New Jersey for a week in Key West, he hadn't an enemy in the world. But a series of puzzling assaults on his privacy, his sanity, and his life has turned his stay at the tasteful Paradise Hotel into Tropical Hell. Maybe it's the humidity. Maybe the Sambuca. Or maybe it's the nickname emblazoned on his license plate: Big Al. For Big Al Marracotta, Mafia capo, a Florida getaway means outrunning a career in crime and rancid calamari. For Katy Sansone it's a bid for sunshine and self-respect--until a case of mistaken identity pits the confused woman against a bafflement of Als and more danger than any one of them had reason to pack for. Now, if Tuschman doesn't watch his back, somebody's going to be reporting the death of another salesman. . . .

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Fawcett

The gumshoe bit wasn’t Peter Amsterdam’s idea. His accountant made him do it. But Pete should have figured that with a comfortable tax dodge in the sunny Florida Keys comes the inevitable knockout blonde looking for help. Sometimes life can be like the movies. Unfortunately for Pete, it isn’t black and white. There’s more to the blonde than meets the eye. And fast on her stiletto heels is a hotshot Key West thug, his possibly duplicitous nympho daughter, a goon in control of the islands’ gambling boats, and a stone-cold corpse whose unexpected appearance has stripped Pete down to his last nerve. All he has to work with are what’s left of his wits, a gun that’s never been fired, and the dashing hope that he can survive this crime long enough to solve it. . . .

The Naked Detective

Key West seduces people--then asks them to leave in the morning. Take Aaron Katz. He shucked his nine-to-five to restore Mangrove Arms, a rotting wreck of a guest house. Suki Sperakis sees opportunity in Florida too. In the meantime she's peddling ad space for a third-rate freebie paper. Then she stumbles upon a nefarious plot revolving around a handsome Russian and his string of T-shirt shops. Can't a guy manufacture plutonium in peace? Now, with the Russian mafia on her trail, freewheeling Suki is running for her life--and right into the safety of Aaron's Mangrove Arms. As dead bodies sully the Key West scenery, a secret society of killers puts the squeeze on Suki and Aaron--and conspires to turn an island paradise into a tropical death-trap. . . .

Mangrove Squeeze

Contemporary

Ballantine Books

Laurence Shames, whom the Chicago Tribune calls "one of our best crime fiction writers," is back. This time he brings us a hilarious novel of mistaken identity and tropical crime that proves that while we all love the idea of a vacation, the truth is we often end up wishing we'd stayed home. For Alan Tuschman--mild-mannered furniture salesman from New Jersey, a man without an enemy--a vacation in Key West turns out to be not paradise but a hell of bizarre assaults on him, his property, and his sanity. Why? It might have something to do with the nickname emblazoned on his license plate. For Big Al Marracotta--Mafia capo and boss of New York's Fulton Fish Market--vacation is the time when a long career of crime and rancid sea-food finally threatens to catch up with him. And for lissome Katy Sansone, who is seeking no more than some sunshine and a little self-respect, Key West serves up a bafflement of Als, and way more danger than she'd packed for. Rich in the loopy insights and surprising tenderness that have become Shames's hallmarks, Welcome to Paradise is his best novel yet.

Welcome to Paradise: A Novel

United States

Villard

"I never meant to be a private eye." Thus are we introduced to Pete Amsterdam, the world's most reluctant sleuth and the improbable but totally engaging protagonist of this wry and irresistible novel. Naked in his hot tub, Pete is idly reviewing his morning tennis game when trouble arrives in the form of the inevitable blonde. This being Key West, the blonde is not quite what she seems, and it's useless to explain to her that he's not a real detective--that, in fact, he got his P.I. license strictly as a tax dodge, a way to pretend his new wine cellar is an "office." She's got troubles of her own--big troubles that are utterly foreign to the cozy little paradise Pete has crafted for himself. Why, then, does the unwilling gumshoe allow himself to be squeezed ever tighter against Key West's humid underbelly--involved with the likes of local bully Lefty Ortega, his nympho daughter, and the sleazeball who controls the island's gambling boats? And why does he feel that his life is being taken over by the demands and traditions of the detective story? Will Pete blunder his way through to solving the crime? Will he penetrate the leotard of the lissome yoga teacher who is his only ally? The answers will be found in these fast-moving and hilarious pages, where the hard-boiled flirts with the postmodern. Think of this novel as Raymond Chandler meets Woody Allen meets the Coen brothers, and as a romp that somehow breaks through to serious consideration of the themes of community and responsibility, and the notion that maybe all of us could be heroes--even if mostly in spite of ourselves.

Florida Straits

Joey Goldman's flying south for the winter. The second-string New York wiseguy just packed up his faithful girlfriend Sandra and took off for Key West -- land of sun, surf and sleaze -- where a small-time hustler in search of a racket can score the big one. If he can find it. Enter Joey's half brother Gino. On the lam from the mob after one of the most royally screwed-up jewel heists in Florida history, Gino's a man in need of a fall guy. Which is where Joey comes in . . . Suddenly, everyone's after Joey -- including the ruthless Miami don who wants his three million worth of uncut emeralds and who just dispatched his goons to deliver Joey a one-way ticket -- out. Now Joey's where he always wanted to be -- in the big time. All he has to do is find out where the stones are stashed. And for an unikely hero out to make a killing, this could be Paradise . . . if he lives long enough.

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See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by SHAMES, Laurence. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by SHAMES, Laurence

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by SHAMES, Laurence. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Big Time: Harvard Business School's Most Successful Class--And How It Shaped America

Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived

Scavenger Reef

Sunburn

Welcome to Paradise

The Naked Detective

Mangrove Squeeze

Welcome to Paradise: A Novel

The Naked Detective

Florida Straits