Booklists: suggested reading

 

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The Office Stars

 

Work, workers, the workplace, corporate world, etc. Office romances, politics and more. Many of these titles could give the reader a new perspective about the meaning of a "bad day at the office".

 

Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.

Reading list of related interest: Labor Stars

Fiction

• Flippin' the Script
  Author: Ford, Aisha
  Publisher: Walk Worthy $ 23.95 ISBN: 0446531820 Date: 2004
  Working hard to achieve a promotion in spite of a difficult boss and a budding office romance, talk show producer and Christian Sabrina Bradley accepts an opportunity to produce a television segment involving kept New Year's resolutions, but finds the offer compromised by her own resolution that she would fall in love.
  Updated 8.24.05
• Bad Publicity
  Author: Frank, Jeffrey
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 22 ISBN: 0743247760 Date: 2004
  Kirkus
  Frank's last novel The Columnist was called "A lusty, witty novel of Washington." --Newsweek. This is his latest story of what makes news and why there is no bad PR.
  Updated 10.28.03
• Vertical Run
  Author: Garber, Joseph R.
  Publisher: Bantam $ 21.95 ISBN: 0553100335 Date: 1995
  Booklist
  A hot, compelling thriller sure to be one of the biggest hits of the summer. Every morning, in his 45th-floor executive office, David Elliot savors the moments before his workday begins--until the morning his boss aims a gun at him. For the rest of the day, everyone David meets will try to kill him. He has 24 hours to find out why.
  Suggested Reading: Time Changes | Survival
  Updated 8.24.05
• The Firm
  Author: Grisham, John
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 30 ISBN: 0385416342 Date: 1991
  Kirkus
  LA Law meets The Godfather in the most talked about thriller of the year. A Harvard Law graduate joins a wealthy tax firm, only to find out it is owned by the most powerful Mob family in Chicago, and that they're laundering vast sums of money through dummy corporations around the world. And the FBI is pressuring him to become their informant . . . but perhaps there is one way out.
  Updated 8.24.05
• The Dinosaur Club
  Author: Heffernan, William
  Publisher: Morrow $ 24 ISBN: 068814988X Date: 1997
  In a five-day span Jack Fallon learns that his wife of 24 years is dumping him and that the company he's worked for all his life is doing the same. Along with other coworkers in the 50/50 class 50 years old, making $50,000 or more Jack fights back by forming "The Dinosaur Club".
  Updated 8.24.05
• Slab Rat
  Author: Heller, Ted
  Publisher: Scribner $ 23 ISBN: 0684864967 Date: 2000
  Kirkus Booklist
  In the pitch-perfect tradition of Nick Hornsby, Christopher Buckley, and Martin Amis comes Ted Heller with a razor-sharp, highly comic novel of ambition, deception and lethal office politics.
  Suggested Reading: Humorous Fiction
• Kings of Infinite Space
  Author: Hynes, James
  Publisher: St Martins$ 24.95ISBN: 031245645X Date: 2004
  PW
  The author of The Lecturer's Tale now delivers a hilarious yet frightening spoof of our everyday lives that gives true voice to the old adage "work is hell."
  Updated 8.22.05
• The Animal Hour
  Author: Klavan, Andrew
  Publisher: Pocket $ 20 ISBN: 0671740105 Date: 1993
  Halloween in Manhattan. Everyone has their bad days, but for Nancy Kincaid, this will be the worst of her life. Arriving at her office, her colleagues insist they have never seen her before. The only clue she has is a voice that whispers someone will be murdered that night--by 8:00, the Animal Hour.
  Updated 8.22.05
• How to Get Home: A Novella and Stories
  Author: Lott, Bret
  Publisher: John Blair $ 18.95 ISBN: 0895871408 Date: 1996
  PW
  From the critically acclaimed author of Jewel, Reed's Beach, and A Dream of Old Leaves, comes a new collection of short stories that explores the dangers and trials of everyday life. The people in these stories come from working lives, lives where the struggle for home and family is waged daily; lives where an ominous slip of paper on the office desk or a broken glass left lying on the kitchen floor signal the precariousness of what is held dear.
  Updated 8.22.05
• The Anxiety of Everyday Objects
  Author: Sheehan, Aurelie
  Publisher: Penguin $ 14 (paper) ISBN: 0142003700 Date: 2004
  Kirkus LJ
  An original, witty, compulsively readable tale for any woman who has struggled with creative yearning and duty to the daily grind. In her absorbing debut novel, Sheehan's depiction of the working girl's life in the big city is as charming as it is inspiring.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 2.13.04
• Cubicles
  Author: Spencer, Camika
  Publisher: Villard $ 21.95 ISBN: 0375507590 Date: 2002
  New from the Blackboard bestselling author of When All Hell Breaks Loose, this is a story of what happens when old secrets make office politics spiral out of control, and three women will each have to decide how far they're willing to go to climb the corporate ladder.
  Updated 8.22.05
• Fat Bald Jeff
  Author: Stella, Leslie
  Publisher: Grove $ 12 ISBN: 0802137725 Date: 2001
  Kirkus
  A wild spoof of office politics and slacker style, Fat Bald Jeff takes us on a mad journey through the cocktail parties, heinous apartments, mindless drudgery, and thrift-store refinement that are the twenty-something experience. It pits two office misfits in a plot to overthrow the office hierarchy through underground Web publishing.
  Updated 8.24.05
• The Ax
  Author: Westlake, Donald
  Publisher: Mysterious List Price: $23 ISBN: 0892965878 Date: 1997
  PW
  Washington Post Book World Informed Opinion Best Book
  NYTBR Notable
  The multi-award-winning, widely acclaimed mystery master and screenplay writer Donald E. Westlake delivers another masterpiece with this brilliant, laser-sharp tale of the deadly consequences of corporate downsizing.
  

Nonfiction