The English-language debut of one of Japan’s most talented contemporary writers, selling over 650,000 copies there, Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura. Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of “Smile Mart,” she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction—many are laid out line by line in the store’s manual—and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a “normal” person excellently, more or less. Managers come and go, but Keiko stays at the store for eighteen years. It’s almost hard to tell where the store ends and she begins. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action... A brilliant depiction of an unusual psyche and a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.

On December 21 1988, 270 people died when Pan Am 103 was blown out of the sky over Lockerbie. Finally, after 11 years of investigation, political stalemate and legal delays, two Libyan men prepare to face trial for the Lockerbie bombing. But many observers - including legal and law enforcement officials close to the case - say the trial may not produce a satisfying answer to the question of who bombed Pan Am 103.

Convenience is King When you make it easier for customers to do business with you, they will reward you with their money, their loyalty, and their referrals. There’s a reason they call it a convenience store – because it’s convenient! When you have to pick up a gallon of milk, would you rather stop by a large supermarket or a 7-Eleven? Customers who shop at convenience stores know the selection is smaller and the prices are often higher...yet they still come in droves because of the ease of purchase. What about the minibar in your hotel room? That’s convenient too...but the convenience comes at a cost. Did you ever stop to think that the same $5.00 can of Coca-Cola in the hotel’s mini-fridge can be bought down the hall from the vending machine for just $1.25? Yet even with that can of Coke being four times more expensive, hotels are restocking minibars every day. Customers will pay for convenience. And they’ll choose to do more business over time with the people and companies that make their lives more convenient! Whether you’re trying to out-service a competitor or disrupt an entire industry, creating less friction and being more convenient for your customers should be your strategy. When you raise the convenience bar, you create the next level of amazing customer experience. This book shows you how to leverage convenience as a powerful way to differentiate yourself from your competition. You’ll learn six compelling strategies, supported by numerous examples and case studies that will fuel your plan to create a focus on convenience for your customers. The value proposition is both simple and profound: when you reduce friction and make it easier for customers to do business with you, they’ll reward you with their money, their loyalty, and their referrals. That’s the advantage of being a part of The Convenience Revolution.

Bill Scott and James Hawkins describe in easy to understand terms how convenience store operators can double the profits in every store and turn their convenience stores into Cash Generating Monsters.

Showing both the drama of familial intimacy and the ups and downs of the everyday, My Old Faithful introduces readers to a close-knit Chinese family. These ten interconnected short stories, which take place in China and the United States over a thirty-year period, merge to paint a nuanced portrait of family life, full of pain, surprises, and subtle acts of courage. Richly textured narratives from the mother, the father, the son, and the daughters play out against the backdrop of China's social and economic change. With quiet humor and sharp insight into the ordinary, Yang Huang writes of a father who spanks his son out of love, a brother who betrays his sister, and a woman who returns to China after many years to find her country changed in ways both expected and startling.

A Fresh and Important New Way to Understand Why We Buy Why did the RAZR ultimately ruin Motorola? Why does Wal-Mart dominate rural and suburban areas but falter in large cities? Why did Starbucks stumble just when it seemed unstoppable? The answer lies in the ever-present tension between fidelity (the quality of a consumer’s experience) and convenience (the ease of getting and paying for a product). In Trade-Off, Kevin Maney shows how these conflicting forces determine the success, or failure, of new products and services in the marketplace. He shows that almost every decision we make as consumers involves a trade-off between fidelity and convenience–between the products we love and the products we need. Rock stars sell out concerts because the experience is high in fidelity-–it can’t be replicated in any other way, and because of that, we are willing to suffer inconvenience for the experience. In contrast, a downloaded MP3 of a song is low in fidelity, but consumers buy music online because it’s superconvenient. Products that are at one extreme or the other–those that are high in fidelity or high in convenience–-tend to be successful. The things that fall into the middle-–products or services that have moderate fidelity and convenience-–fail to win an enthusiastic audience. Using examples from Amazon and Disney to People Express and the invention of the ATM, Maney demonstrates that the most successful companies skew their offerings to either one extreme or the other-–fidelity or convenience-–in shaping products and building brands.

Following a deadly car crash, small-town lawyer Lance Cooper risked everything to battle one of the most powerful auto corporations in the world to get justice for a young woman. A fast-paced, journalistic account of tragedy turned to triumph, despair to hope, Cobalt Cover-Up is an inspirational, thoroughly compelling, and victorious read. In the midst of his own family struggles, small-town Georgia lawyer Lance Cooper agreed to defend Ken and Beth Melton and investigate the deadly accident that killed their daughter Brooke after she inexplicably lost control of her Chevy Cobalt. But what started as a heartbreaking yet all too common lawsuit quickly escalated into a David vs. Goliath case when Cooper discovered shocking evidence that General Motors concealed an ignition switch defect for nearly a decade--resulting in 124 deaths, including Brooke's, and risking the lives of millions more. ­­ Despite GM's settlement offers and attempts to bury evidence, Cooper refused to back down and worked tirelessly to expose the truth. Locked in a tenacious legal fight, Cooper and the Meltons faced incredible odds--Ken and Beth losing jobs and suffering the difficulty of grieving a beloved daughter during a court battle, Cooper risking his reputation and private practice against the overwhelming opposition from GM's team of lawyers, and both parties facing massive financial strain. Yet, in the relentless pursuit for justice and to protect future innocent lives, this small-town lawyer and a working-class American couple stared down the biggest US auto manufacturing mogul and ultimately transformed the entire industry.

The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixar’s singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve. “Might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”—Fast Company For nearly thirty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner eighteen Academy Awards. The joyous storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable. As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the twenty-five movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as: • Give a good idea to a mediocre team and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team and they will either fix it or come up with something better. • It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them. • The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. • A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody. Creativity, Inc. has been significantly expanded to illuminate the continuing development of the unique culture at Pixar. It features a new introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts, and changes and updates throughout. Pursuing excellence isn’t a one-off assignment but an ongoing, day-in, day-out, full-time job. And Creativity, Inc. explores how it is done.