Category: book releases

Weekly Book Roundup: Essential Reads on Global Expansion and Risk Management

This week’s spotlight on business books for leaders. Photos: Barnes & Noble

Books of the Week: Scale Across Cultures, Personal Security, and the NASA Way

Welcome to this week’s roundup of essential business and leadership reads. Whether you’re expanding your company across international borders, looking to navigate risk with the precision of an intelligence officer, or seeking to build a high-performance team using lessons from space exploration, I spotlight three standout books to elevate your strategy.

1. Mind The Gap: Scaling Businesses Across Cultures

By Vincent Lauria and Stefano Pellegrino

“Your global expansion isn’t failing because of your strategy; it’s failing because you don’t see the cultural gap.”

Have you ever done everything right, built a strong product, crafted a solid pitch, and entered a promising market, only to watch deals fall apart and partnerships stall? (Barnes & Noble, 2026)

Written by global venture capitalist Vincent Lauria and international operator Stefano Pellegrino, Mind The Gap is not another generic business guide filled with one-size-fits-all frameworks. It’s a real-world playbook built from decades of experience scaling companies across continents, exploring the human layer that most books ignore.

  • What You Will Learn: How to walk into any new market with confidence, instantly read the room, build trust faster than your competitors, and close deals that once seemed impossible.
  • Key Takeaway: Each chapter delivers clear, usable takeaways you can implement right away, acting like a seasoned global advisor guiding your every move.

About the Authors

  • Vinnie Lauria is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur turned venture capitalist who has spent over 15 years helping founders build companies across high-growth innovation markets in Asia, the US, and the Middle East. As founding partner of Golden Gate Ventures, he has invested in over 100 companies across 15+ countries.
  • Stefano Pellegrino is an attorney qualified in New York and Italy, holding an LL.M. from UC Berkeley and a PhD from the University of Pavia. His book is based on conversations with more than 50 global founders, executives, and investors from the world’s top technology companies.

2. Understanding Personal Security and Risk

By Charles E. Goslin

Blending decades of global intelligence and security experience with time-tested principles, this book delivers a powerful, practical framework for personal safety and risk awareness. (Barnes & Noble, 2026)

Updated to reflect today’s realities, Understanding Personal Security and Risk equips readers, especially those traveling or operating in high-risk environments, to recognize threats, understand adversarial behavior, and make informed, rapid decisions under pressure.

  • Who It’s For: Professionals managing global security programs, travelers, and individuals navigating an increasingly unpredictable world. It uniquely addresses vulnerabilities faced by women, children, the elderly, LGBTQ+ individuals, immigrants, missionaries, and university students.

About the Author

  • Charles E. Goslin is a retired intelligence officer who actively consults, writes, and travels. With a lifetime spent analyzing risk and threat across corporate operations and government matters, he has developed executive management curriculum and security tradecraft for universities and foreign governments worldwide.

3. Building Culture the NASA Way: Mission-Critical Principles For Creating Any Organization’s Culture

By Brady Pyle

What does it take to build a culture where people perform under pressure, pursue an impossible mission, and show up every single day fully committed? Ask NASA. (Barnes & Noble, 2026)

For thirty years, Brady Pyle worked inside one of the most extraordinary organizations on earth, shaping the culture of an agency where the stakes couldn’t be higher. Through compelling firsthand stories of the people and decisions that defined the agency’s culture, Pyle brings to life what it feels like to work alongside astronauts and engineers.

  • The NASA Framework: Using the Navigate, Assess and Adapt, Strengthen Leadership, and Activate Inclusion and Innovation (NASA) model, Pyle delivers a clear playbook for building cultures of trust, performance, and purpose—whether you lead a team of five or an organization of fifty thousand.

About the Author

  • Brady Pyle is the Chief Human Resources and Inclusion Officer at Space Center Houston, a two-time recipient of the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, and the 2024 HRO Today Learning and Development Executive of the Year for Lifetime Achievement.

‘Heavy Cream’ Book Review: Sarah Blakley-Cartwright’s Coming-of-Age Novel

‘Heavy Cream’ is Sarah Blakley-Cartwright’s new novel. Photo:

Heavy Cream: A Novel by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright: A Review

Abandoned by her mother in New York, sixteen-year-old Geraldine falls under the influence of three women, each seeking to form her in their image in this coming-of-age story from the bestselling author of Alice Sadie Celine. (Barnes & Noble, 2026)

The Story

Geraldine (Gerry) is ten years old when her grandmother passes away. She and her mother arrive in town to stake their claim. Her grandfather had preceded her years ago, so they naturally assumed they’d be getting their fair share of stuff. Her grandparents meant nothing to her, so she wasn’t affected either way. A week later, they come across Nell, her mother’s estranged sister, at the memorial, and naturally, sparks fly.

Gerry has spent most of her young life on the road with her mother, moving from city to city. She is homeschooled, having never attended a traditional school, though they occasionally attended homeschoolers’ meetings so Gerry could socialize with children her own age. On the road, her mother teaches her how to circumvent the rules: how to spend the day at a motel’s swimming pool without being a guest and how to avoid paying extra for the chicken on a Caesar salad. She has learned how to adapt to her circumstances, no matter how dysfunctional.

When Gerry is sixteen, they meet a group of guys from Australia, including Patrick. He and her mother pair up and spend days together, even going to the beach as a family. Then one day, he just disappears, which deepresses her mother. Out of the blue, her mother tells Gerry that she’ll be spending a week with Bonnie, her old college friend, in Connecticut because she’s going to Australia to see Patrick. Days turn to weeks, and Gerry’s mother never comes back.

Her journey takes an unexpected turn when three very different women step into her life, each determined to shape her future. Alongside Bonnie and Nell, Gerry meets Finley, an old-money socialite at a party, who introduces her to a world of Manhattan privilege and sophistication and enrolls her in a normal school for once in her life.

Review

What happens when the only person who has ever shaped your world suddenly abandons you, leaving three very different women to decide who you should become? In Heavy Cream, Sarah Blakley-Cartwright delivers an insightful story about Gerry, whose unconventional upbringing has left her woefully unprepared for life on her own. Having grown up in a world of instability and dysfunction, she finds herself navigating a reality she barely understands, especially against the backdrop of New York City.

Character Analysis

Gerry is a protagonist defined by survival and adaptability. Raised on the road with an eccentric mother, Gerry is hyper-observant yet profoundly unanchored. The three mentors who take her in act as mirrors reflecting different facets of womanhood:

  • Bonnie represents conventional, stifling respectability.
  • Nell champions rigorous self-invention and artistic ambition.
  • Finley seduces Gerry with the rarefied, exclusionary armor of high-society privilege.

Gerry’s internal conflict lies in untangling these competing projections to find her own voice.

Major Themes

  • Unconventional Motherhood: The novel deconstructs traditional maternal care, contrasting the toxic survivalism of Gerry’s biological mother with the flawed, surrogate caretaking of Bonnie, Nell, and Finley.
  • Inheritance and Mental Illness: Blakley-Cartwright probes how emotional baggage and psychological turbulence pass down generational lines, asking whether we are doomed to repeat our parents’ mistakes.
  • The Comedy of Manners: The novel blends acute psychological depth with witty social satire, charting Gerry’s eccentric, bumpy path toward authentic selfhood.

The narrative balances humor with emotional depth while examining family relationships and personal growth. I especially enjoyed the premise of three women offering such contrasting paths to one young girl. It’s an important reminder that becoming yourself isn’t always easy, especially when everyone else has a different idea of who you should be.

Told through Gerry’s first-person point of view, it provides deep insight into her thought processes, particularly when she accepts that her mother is not coming back:

“Now, too many days disappeared, I felt whatever we had called love thinning out like a voice I couldn’t hear anymore.”

Final Verdict

Heavy Cream by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright is an unconventional story about identity and the complicated nature of family. Fans of literary fiction centered around family dysfunction and the multifaceted nature of female influence should definitely put this one on their reading list.

“In most households, there was one norm to rebel against. I had competing mothers. I worried I’d spend the next twenty years trying to see past the three women’s views, which blocked my own.”

Rating: 4 out of 5.

** Thank you to Sarah Jean Grimm and Broadside PR for my gifted ARC for review consideration. I haven’t been compensated for this review and all views and opinions expressed are my own.

About the Author

Sarah Blakley-Cartwright is the author of Alice Sadie Celine and Red Riding Hood, a #1 New York Times bestseller published worldwide in thirty-eight editions and fifteen languages. She’s the editor of Hauser & Wirth’s The Artist’s Library for Ursula magazine and an associate editor at A Public Space.

Navigating Grief and Maternal Guilt in ‘The Porcelain Heart’ Memoir

‘The Porcelain Heart: A Mother’s Memoir of Unexpected Loss’ is Marcy Kelly’s new memoir. Photo: Barnes & Noble

Book Review: The Porcelain Heart: A Mother’s Memoir of Unexpected Loss by Marcy Kelly

The Story

Losing a child is a heartbreak no parent should ever have to endure. In The Porcelain Heart: A Mother’s Memoir of Unexpected Loss, Marcy Kelly offers a personal and emotionally raw account of life after the sudden death of her beloved forty-five-year-old son, Michael, her only child. Through her journey, readers witness the devastating reality of grief and the long, complicated road toward acceptance. (Barnes & Noble, 2026)

The book begins with Marcy and her husband, Jim, at home. They receive an unexpected visit from longtime friends Susan and Roy Brown. Marcy knows something is wrong when Jim drops what he’s doing and offers to answer the door. They gather in the kitchen, where Jim breaks the news: Michael is dead. A deputy from the sheriff’s office had called thirty minutes prior because they found his business card in Michael’s wallet, and Jim was just waiting for their friends to arrive to help tell Marcy.

Initially, Marcy refuses to believe it. Later, she blames herself for not recognizing the signs of his illness. She experiences disturbing dreams about not saving him and spirals through the various stages of grief as she waits months for the coroner to render an official cause. However, Marcy rejects the fifth and final stage of grief; in her mind, if she accepts Michael’s death, he will never return.

The memoir chronicles Marcy’s journey during the year following Michael’s death. She endures all the “firsts” without him, including holidays and his birthday. She joins grief groups, remembers frightening and fun times together, questions whether she was a good mother, and tries to distract herself with travel. To honor his memory, she creates a golf scholarship in his name and commissions a stone people and pet fountain to be built along the path where he used to hike.

On the one-year anniversary of his passing, she takes his ashes to his favorite place, a lake in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and finally begins moving toward acceptance.

Review

The Porcelain Heart is a moving testament to the enduring power of a mother’s love. Kelly’s honesty makes this memoir especially meaningful for anyone navigating loss or supporting someone through bereavement. Heartbreaking yet ultimately hopeful, it reminds readers that healing doesn’t mean forgetting. Sometimes, learning to live with loss is the most courageous act of love.

Kelly tackles profound themes of grief, maternal guilt, and memory. Her story doesn’t follow a pre-set, neat path to healing; instead, she reveals the agonizing disorientation of enduring “firsts” without her son while struggling with whether she did all she could to help him.

Sample Chapter List

The book includes insightful and deeply personal chapters, such as:

  1. Proof
  2. The Next Day
  3. The Last Seat
  4. In Limbo
  5. The Viewing
  6. My Kingdom for a Password
  7. The Man in the Blue Print Shirt
  8. The Friday Email
  9. The Final Visit
  10. A Life in Fifteen Minutes

Key Highlights & Takeaways

  • Chapter 6 (“My Kingdom for a Password”): Marcy struggles to access Michael’s phone for contacts, final pictures, and videos because she doesn’t know his password, finding no help even at the Apple Store. It serves as a vital life lesson: “So much important information is stored on phones and computers—and for those, like Michael, who pride themselves on living a paperless life, the lack of access creates serious complications for survivors.”
  • Chapter 17 (“Why Is There No Word?”): Marcy explores how grief impacts couples differently, noting that losing a child either brings partners closer together or breaks them apart. As she observes, “In some cases, the trauma of their loss exacerbates the fissures that already exist.”

⚠️ Content & Trigger Warnings

  • Chapter 11 (“Wong in America”): Recalls a traumatic home accident that tragically claimed the life of Michael’s beloved dog, Clover.
  • Chapter 10 (“A Life in Fifteen Minutes”): A young Michael prematurely introduces a new bunny, Henry, to their existing one Cleo with disastrous (though thankfully survivable) results.

Kelly’s writing is sincere, offering an unvarnished look at the non-linear nature of heartbreak. The Porcelain Heart is more than just a book about sorrow; it’s proof of an enduring maternal bond that death can’t sever. It’s highly recommended for anyone who has navigated profound loss or sought light in the darkest corners of grief.

“Most parents get to see their child’s name engraved on a wedding invitation, but I would see mine on a sympathy acknowledgement card. I added that to my growing list of the ways life wasn’t fair.”

Rating: 4 out of 5.

** Thank you to Fauzia Burke/FSB Associates for the Advance Reader Copy (ARC) for review consideration. I haven’t been compensated for this review and all views and opinions expressed are my own.

About the Author

Marcy Kelly has worked in communications and press relations at U.S. government agencies and has led several nonprofit organizations. She studied creative writing at UCLA and earned a Master of Fine Arts from Antioch University. Her short fiction has been published in Narrative Magazine and in various short story collections, while her essays on grief have appeared on Medium and other online platforms. Additionally, her co-written script, Fool Me Twice, won the Producers Guild of America best screenplay award.

Essential Leadership Books to Help You Lead with Purpose and Impact

Level up your leadership with these business books. Photo: Barnes & Noble/Gemini-Generated

Books of the Week: Essential Reads for Modern Business Leaders

Whether you are looking to redefine your leadership strategy, elevate an undervalued function, or navigate the deeply human side of management, this week’s book spotlight offers invaluable insights. Consider these three powerful reads designed to help you lead with purpose, impact, and authenticity.

1. Create Your Own Luck: How Leaders Leverage the Intersection of Preparation and Opportunity

By Dr. Jeremy Strickland Owoh

The concept of luck carries various implications, often shaped by individual experiences, and perspectives. From a spiritual realm, there has also been some controversy about whether there is really such a thing as luck. Throughout his leadership journey, the author has contemplated its true meaning and has come to define luck as the intersection of preparation and opportunity. (Barnes & Noble, 2026)

If there is one principle that sums up his leadership experience, it’s an unwavering commitment to preparation, ensuring that he is ready to seize any opportunity that arises. His journey has been shaped not only by diligence and readiness but also by the profound influence of grace and mercy.

About the Author: Dr. Jeremy Strickland Owoh is a transformational educational leader and superintendent of the Jacksonville North Pulaski School District, where he leads with a clear focus on Academics, Behavior, and Culture (ABC). With experience spanning teacher, principal, district, and state leadership, he has consistently driven innovation, improved outcomes, and expanded opportunities for students and educators alike.

2. The Payroll Pivot: From Invisibility to Influence

By Nick Day

Payroll controls up to 80% of an organization’s operating expenditure and holds compliance risks worth millions. It’s the primary reason every employee trusts their employer enough to show up tomorrow. And yet, it remains one of the most strategically undervalued functions in business. The Payroll Pivot exists to change that. (Barnes & Noble, 2026)

Nick Day has spent 24 years placing over 10,000 payroll professionals, conducting more than 400 podcast conversations with industry leaders, and coaching payroll executives across the globe. This book distills everything he has learned about why brilliant professionals stay invisible, and what happens when they stop.

“Payroll professionals who pivot will shape the future. Those who don’t will be shaped by it. This is your pivot.”

About the Author: Nick Day is a keynote speaker, executive coach, and author ranked the number one Global Payroll Thought Leader in the world by Thinkers360. He holds the PayrollOrg Global Vision Award and Reward Strategy Personality of the Year 2023. As founder of JGA Recruitment Group and host of The Payroll Podcast, The HR L&D Podcast, and Mindful Paths Podcast, he sits at the intersection of payroll, leadership, and human performance. He is also the creator of The Fear Equation™, a framework that helps professionals turn hesitation into decisive action.

3. Leading While Human: Notes I Wish Someone Had Given Me

By Ralph Kellogg

Leadership is rarely what we imagine it will be. It’s not defined by how polished we appear, but by how consciously we choose to show up. (Barnes & Noble, 2026)

Most people enter leadership believing it will bring clarity, confidence, and authority—that experience will quiet doubt and success will resolve uncertainty. Instead, leadership often magnifies the very things we hoped it would erase: fear, pressure, responsibility, identity, and the constant awareness that our decisions affect others in profound ways.

This book is not a manual on strategy, productivity, or performance metrics. It’s an exploration of the human side of leadership—the parts rarely discussed in meetings or executive coaching sessions. Through deeply honest essays drawn from real workplace experiences, the author examines how leadership is shaped by lived experience rather than just training and ambition.

Written for current and emerging leaders (or anyone who works with others), this book offers a thoughtful examination of what “leadership” actually requires: not perfection, certainty, or control, but awareness, humility, and courage.

About the Author: Ralph Kellogg is a senior human resources executive, speaker, and advocate for mentally healthy workplaces with over two decades of experience leading people operations across complex organizations. A TEDx speaker exploring the cost of silence and unseen struggles in the workplace, Ralph frequently delivers keynotes on human resources leadership, workplace inclusion, and building organizational cultures rooted in trust and psychological safety.

Weekly Reading List: How to Master AI Fluency and Build Meaningful Leadership

‘The AI Fluent Leader’ by Gísli Ólafsson. Photo: Amazon

Books of the Week

Looking for your next impactful read? This week’s featured selection explores deep human connection, leadership in the age of artificial intelligence, and how to successfully navigate constant technological change.

1. Make It Matter: Unlocking Human Potential Through the Mattering Method

By Matthew Emerzian

Something deeper is happening beneath the surface of our lives and our work. People are more connected than ever, yet feel more alone, achieving more, yet questioning if any of it truly matters. In the quiet moments, more people than we realize are asking: “Do I matter?” (Amazon, 2026)

In Make It Matter, Matthew Emerzian introduces a powerful and timely framework—The Mattering Mindset™—built from over two decades of work helping individuals, teams, and organizations reconnect to what matters most. This isn’t about motivation. It’s about mattering. Because when people know how much they matter, to themselves, to others, and to something bigger, everything changes:

  • How they show up
  • How they lead
  • How they live

Blending research, real-world application, and deeply personal insight, Make It Matter offers a new way forward that addresses the root of disconnection, burnout, and disengagement. Whether you’re navigating your own search for meaning, leading a team through constant change, or trying to make a greater impact, this book meets you where you are and helps you move forward.

“In a world that feels increasingly disconnected, uncertain, and heavy, the most powerful thing we can do is help people know they matter. And when we do that, we don’t just change how people feel. We change what’s possible.”

About the Author

Matt Emerzian is a four-time bestselling author and founder of the nonprofit Every Monday Matters, which has spent nearly two decades bringing mattering work into schools, companies, and communities for people of all ages, reaching nearly four million people.

2. Aligned With Intelligence: Reflections on Leadership, AI, and Consciousness

By Jeff Arnold

Artificial intelligence is accelerating. But the real shift isn’t happening in machines, it’s happening in us. (Amazon, 2026)

Aligned With Intelligence is not a technical book about AI. It’s a guide on how leaders must think, decide, and act in a world where intelligence is no longer limited to human minds.

Each chapter is intentionally brief and designed to be read in minutes, but considered for much longer. Between chapters, you will find space, an intentional design choice because in an age of constant acceleration, the ability to pause, think clearly, and act with purpose will define the next generation of leadership.

The book challenges a simple assumption: that more intelligence automatically leads to better outcomes. It doesn’t. Alignment does. As AI becomes faster, more embedded, and more powerful, the question is no longer “What can technology do?” The question is:

“Who are we becoming while we build it?”

If you are a leader, builder, operator, or thinker navigating the future of AI, this book will help you ask better questions—the most valuable skill of all in the age of intelligent systems.

About the Author

Jeff Arnold is a bestselling author known for a writing style that feels like a conversation with a trusted guide. His work blends vivid storytelling with practical insight, turning complex ideas into clear, memorable experiences. Reflecting his background as an entrepreneur and industry leader, Jeff writes to offer readers ideas that shift how they see the world.

3. The AI Fluent Leader: The Art of Leading When AI Changes Everything

By Gísli Ólafsson

Your AI program is not underperforming because of the technology. It is underperforming because of a leadership gap no one is talking about. (Amazon, 2026)

The AI Fluent Leader answers that challenge with precision and honesty. Gísli Ólafsson studied what separates the 12% of organizations that generate real AI returns from the 88% that do not. The answer is not better technology, bigger budgets, or faster adoption—it is better leadership.

The AUGMENT Framework

The book maps seven leadership imperatives into a complete system:

  1. Architect the Vision
  2. Upgrade Your Workforce
  3. Guard the Guardrails
  4. Manage the Machines
  5. Engineer the Culture
  6. Navigate New Competition
  7. Transform the Executive

Each chapter opens with a leadership challenge, provides a framework for addressing it, and closes with a sequenced action plan. The book includes practical tools such as an AI Leadership Bottleneck Diagnostic, an AI Fluency Self-Assessment, workforce readiness frameworks, and a guide to building AI personas that think alongside you on strategic problems.

“The organizations winning with AI are not using better tools. They have better leadership. This book shows you exactly what that leadership looks like, and how to build it.”

About the Author

Gísli Ólafsson is a technology executive, former parliamentarian, and crisis leader who has worked at the intersection of AI, institutions, and accountability for three decades. From Microsoft to global humanitarian responses and national government, he has led under pressure where technology and responsibility collide.

Photo: Amazon
Photo: Amazon

‘The Lotus Blooms Twice’ Book Review: Stories of Love & Resilience

‘The Lotus Blooms Twice’ is Monica Saigal’s new short story collection. Photo: Paste Creative Book Tours, used with permission.

Book Review: The Lotus Blooms Twice: Stories of Love, Life, and Redemption

By Monica Saigal

Part of Paste Creative Book Tours

The Lotus Blooms Twice is a moving collection of fourteen stories and a bonus novella exploring the complexities of love, loss, and the possibility of beginning again. With settings ranging from Delhi’s bustling streets to quiet Virginia kitchens, these multicultural literary tales offer an intimate look at ordinary people navigating extraordinary emotional challenges. (Barnes & Noble, 2026)

Saigal places women in midlife at the heart of her stories, giving voice to experiences that are often overlooked. Her characters confront betrayal, grief, caregiving, complicated relationships, and the longing for something more:

  • A widow struggles to reclaim her memories at the Taj Mahal.
  • A wife in a comfortable marriage discovers unexpected stirrings of desire.
  • Family secrets challenge a father’s understanding of the truth.
  • A woman faces the difficult choice between silence and survival.

Pick up your copy of ‘The Lotus Blooms Twice’ today!

Table of Contents

  • The Love Child
  • One and Done
  • The Bitter Season
  • It Is Better to Have Loved
  • A Heritage of Gold
  • The Waltz & Schnitzel
  • The Rhythm of Us
  • Truth? I Dare You
  • The Lotus Blooms Twice
  • The 2:00 a.m. Love Loop
  • The Accounts of Love
  • Still, We Remember
  • Love Guaranteed, No Refunds
  • Bonus Read: The Matchmaker’s Recipe

Standout Story Highlights

1. It Is Better to Have Loved

Neelam is a romance author who has spent most of her life as a single mother after a one-night stand. She agrees to go out with Amit even though she knows he’s married, only to realize she was deluding herself.

“I had known. That was the part that cut the deepest. I had betrayed myself before he ever had the chance.”

2. The Waltz & Schnitzel

Roland is a German engineer who keeps a journal addressed to the love of his life, Farah. He asked her to marry him the night she disappeared, and he hasn’t seen her since. As days turn to months and years, he opens a café named The Waltz & Schnitzel, leaving out a plate of spiced schnitzel, two cups of chai, orange slices, and a candle in the window waiting for her return.

“The silence that once gave me peace before I met you has now grown teeth. It bites into every part of my spirit.”

3. Still, We Remember

Deepa and Arun have been married for 25 years, but Arun is slowly losing his memories to cognitive decline. Girish, his brother, moves in to help care for him because Arun seems to remember him best. This one pulled right at my heartstrings.

“I wept for the man who remembered poetry but forgot my name. For the husband who had loved me splendidly and then vanished while still breathing beside me.”

Review

The honest portrayal of human vulnerability is what makes this collection especially compelling. Saigal avoids fairy-tale endings, embracing the messy realities of relationships and the courage required to move forward, even when endings remain somewhat ambiguous. Her characters are imperfect, relatable, and mot of all, shaped by experiences that resonate particularly with women in their fifties and beyond.

Themes of identity, resilience, forgiveness, reinvention, and second chances weave seamlessly through these stories, reminding readers that personal growth does not end with age. The language is accessible, and for readers unfamiliar with certain Indian terms, a helpful glossary is included at the back.

Some tales are heartbreaking, others unsettling, while several offer quiet moments of joy and hope. Together, they celebrate the strength it takes to rebuild a life when familiar foundations disappear.

The Lotus Blooms Twice is an emotionally rich collection for readers who appreciate character-driven literary fiction and stories that reflect life’s complicated truths. Saigal delivers a beautiful reminder that heartbreak need not mark an ending. Like the lotus, we can bloom again, sometimes more beautifully than before.

💬 My Final Verdict

The Lotus Blooms Twice by Monica Saigal reminds me why I love stories that reflect the messy, yet beautiful, reality of being human. It’s a powerful reminder that heartbreak and uncertainty don’t necessarily define the rest of our lives.

I especially appreciate the focus on women in midlife and beyond, whose dreams and desires deserve to be celebrated just as much as those of younger women. Monica Saigal brings deep emotional sensitivity to experiences that feel deeply personal yet universally relatable. These are stories that invite us to pause, reflect, and perhaps see our own struggles with a little more compassion.

Sometimes the most beautiful blooms come after the hardest seasons, and this collection is a lovely reminder that it’s never too late for a new chapter.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

** Thank you to Stephanie Caruso and Paste Creative Book Tours for the gifted copy for review consideration. I haven’t been compensated for this review and all views and opinions expressed are my own.

About the Author

Monica Saigal (formerly Bhide) is an award-winning author, culinary ambassador, and cultural storyteller whose work explores the intersection of food, identity, and belonging. Born in New Delhi, raised in the Middle East, and now based outside Washington, D.C., she brings a distinctly global perspective to everything she creates.

She currently serves as Culinary Ambassador for Aramark Dining Services and has partnered with leading food and spice brands (including House of Spices), translating culture-rich storytelling into meaningful culinary experiences. In addition to her creative work, Monica runs a storytelling consultancy, working with global organizations to shape narrative-driven brand, cultural, and leadership communications.

A four-time contributor to Best Food Writing anthologies, Monica is a sought-after speaker and educator who has collaborated with institutions including the Smithsonian, Yale University, and Les Dames d’Escoffier. She holds degrees from George Washington University, Lynchburg College, and Bangalore University.

Author Monica Saigal. Photo: Rashmi Gill Photography, used with permission.
Photo: Paste Creative Book Tours

The Future of Work in the Age of AI: Essential Reads for Navigating Workplace Change

‘Finding Direction in the Age of AI’ by Michael Earls and ‘The Delivery Gap’ by Brenn Hill. Photos: Amazon

The Growing Interest in AI and the Future of Work

Books about artificial intelligence (AI) in the workforce are rapidly gaining popularity. While AI is reshaping industries and redefining traditional jobs, such as automating routine tasks and decision-making, business leaders are exploring how technology is transforming the workplace.

Readers are turning to books that explain these changes and offer practical advice on adapting skills, embracing innovation, and preparing for the future. Authors are also examining critical questions about job security and the human side of technology. As AI continues to evolve, these books provide valuable insights into navigating a rapidly changing professional world.

🤖 AI Book Spotlight

1. The Delivery Gap:

Why AI Adoption Fails and How Engineering Leaders Fix It

By Brenn Hill

Synopsis

Your team is writing more code than ever. Your incident rate is climbing too. Pull request volume is up. Review quality is down. Senior engineers are spending their weeks proofreading AI-generated output instead of designing systems. The dashboards say productivity is up. The incident rate says otherwise. (Amazon, 2026)

This is the delivery gap: the growing distance between how fast your team can generate code and how fast your organization can verify that code is correct, secure, and aligned with what you intended to build.

The Delivery Gap shows you:

  • The Verification Triangle — Metrics that tell you whether your verification is keeping pace with your generation velocity.
  • Six-tier quality gates — From static analysis through behavioral monitoring, each catching failure classes the tier below cannot see.
  • The Capability Ladder — Seven levels of organizational readiness, from experimentation through full agentic operations.
  • Eight decisions — An implementation sequence with completion criteria, starting from wherever you are.
  • The Conversation — Six questions your leadership will ask about AI governance, and how to answer them with data.
  • Case studies — What Stripe, Spotify, Webflow, Dropbox, and Airbnb actually built (not what vendors claim).

This is not a book about prompting. It’s a book about what happens after the code is generated.

Target Audience: CTOs, VPs of Engineering, Directors, and Engineering Managers responsible for AI adoption.

About the Author

Brenn Hill is a software engineer, engineering leader, and author based in Berlin. He has spent nearly two decades building software and leading engineering teams across America, Europe, and Asia, working across front-end, back-end, DevOps, data science, and data engineering.

He now teaches AI-augmented development practices to engineering teams and builds open-source tools and management frameworks for software delivery in the age of AI. The Delivery Gap is his second book.

2. Finding Direction in the Age of AI:

Finding Clarity, Leadership and Human Connection in a World Moving at Machine Speed

By Michael Earls

Synopsis

The tools keep getting faster. The questions keep getting harder.

Cloud computing reshaped how organizations build. Artificial intelligence is now rewriting how decisions get made, how work gets done, and how quickly a career can become unrecognizable. (Amazon, 2026)

Most leaders have figured out how to keep up. Far fewer can tell you where they are going.

Finding Direction in the Age of AI is a short, direct book about staying human, and staying oriented, while the ground moves. It’s written by someone who has spent more than two decades inside the change: infrastructure engineering, cloud transformation, and enterprise technology leadership.

The questions this book takes seriously:

  • How do you hold on to clarity when information moves at machine speed?
  • What happens to culture and trust when work becomes fully digital?
  • Can AI raise output without hollowing out the parts of work that made it worth doing?
  • What should a leader actually be good at, now that the machine is good at so much?

Read this if:

  • You lead a team through AI adoption and are tired of the hype on both sides.
  • You are a technologist wondering which of your skills still compound.
  • You want a clear-eyed hour of thinking, not a 400-page survey of the field.

It’s a small book for a reason, it’s the kind of book you finish on a flight and think about for a month. Because the real challenge of the AI era is not keeping up with the speed. It’s remembering where we were trying to go.

About the Author

Michael Earls is a technology leader and writer with more than twenty years across infrastructure, cloud, and AI transformation. He’s also the author of Wired for Purpose and The Digital Compass.

Michael has spent more than twenty years inside the change he writes about, and he writes for the people doing the work, not the people describing it from outside.

Book Review: ‘Jigsaw’ by Jonathan Kellerman (Alex Delaware #41)

‘Jigsaw’ is the latest Alex Delaware novel by Jonathan Kellerman. Photo: Penguin Random House

Book Review: Jigsaw (An Alex Delaware Novel)

By Jonathan Kellerman

Format: Audiobook

The Story

After not hearing from him in over a month, LAPD Homicide Lieutenant Milo Sturgis shows up at psychologist Alex Delaware’s place looking worn out and overworked. He’s stuck on an “easy” case that suddenly turned into a mind-bending whodunit.

When a young woman is found dead at her kitchen table, the initial evidence points directly to an ex-boyfriend with a criminal record. But Milo knows better than to trust an obvious answer, so he turns to Alex, his best friend and long-term consultant on “those cases,” the ones that are different, to help unravel an investigation that refuses to fit together.

Then comes a second grisly discovery: an elderly woman found frozen and mutilated inside a deep freeze. When Milo learns her identity, he’s stunned because she’s someone from his past. Complicating matters further, her home is an extreme hoarder’s den, virtually impassable due to years of accumulated trash and seemingly meaningless objects. Except for the envelopes of cash stashed among the garbage.

As Alex and Milo dig deeper into the seemingly unrelated crimes, they discover shocking links between the victims, unraveling a complex, multi-layered mystery that tests both Milo’s investigative acumen and Alex’s psychological insight.

About Alex Delaware

Alex Delaware made his debut in Jonathan Kellerman’s 1985 detective novel When the Bough Breaks. A forensic psychologist who originally worked in pediatric psychology, Alex frequently consults for the LAPD alongside his close friend, Lt. Milo Sturgis, who appears in every installment of the series.

  • Series Context: Jigsaw marks book 41 in the long-running mystery series.
  • Fun Fact: The series inspired an upcoming streaming adaptation on Prime Video, which is currently in development.

Get your copy of Jigsaw today!

Review

I like the Alex Delaware novels because they involve psychological themes and the author is a psychologist specializing in the treatment of children, just like Alex. This gives them an authentic voice that I find intriguing. With Jigsaw, Jonathan Kellerman delivers another gripping psychological mystery that takes what looks like an open-and-shut homicide and twists it into something far more intricate.

Milo and Alex remain the beating heart of the narrative. Their long-standing friendship gives their professional partnership genuine warmth and authenticity, while their contrasting investigative styles keep the pacing sharp and engaging.

Character Analysis

  • Dr. Alex Delaware: The analytical anchor of the story. Relying on keen psychological insight rather than brute force, Alex’s primary role is decoding the hidden motives behind irrational behavior—from a calculating killer leaving subtle clues to the complex profile of a severe hoarder. His calm, observant demeanor balances the darker, more visceral aspects of the crimes.
  • Lieutenant Milo Sturgis: Driven, cynical, yet fiercely loyal, Milo brings grit and procedural muscle to the duo. Because this case hits exceptionally close to home, the personal connection introduces a rare layer of emotional vulnerability to his hardened LAPD persona, significantly raising the emotional stakes.

Core Themes

  • Deception vs. Hidden Reality: The narrative repeatedly contrasts surface appearances with deeper truths. A seemingly straightforward domestic homicide unravels into a layered mystery, reminding us how easily initial evidence can mask darker realities.
  • Psychological Decay and Hoarding: Beyond serving as a physical obstacle, the hoarder’s den acts as a powerful metaphor for hidden trauma, obsession, and emotional isolation. The physical clutter directly mirrors the tangled mental state of the victim and the labyrinthine nature of the crime itself.
  • The Interconnectedness of Disparate Lives: Kellerman explores the hidden webs connecting seemingly unrelated individuals, illustrating how past relationships, secret transactions, and forgotten histories cross paths—reinforcing the idea that no crime occurs in a vacuum.

Final Verdict

Jigsaw is a fast-paced thriller that expertly fits every piece together for a shocking final reveal. Set against a vivid, noir-infused Los Angeles backdrop, Kellerman captures the city’s unique ambience with sharp, haunting detail. Delaware’s nuanced behavioral analysis balances Sturgis’s street-smart instincts, delivering the exact cerebral punch long-time fans crave.

It’s a deeply satisfying read for anyone who enjoys psychological depth paired with classic detective work, proving once again why the Delaware-Sturgis dynamic remains a gold standard in crime fiction.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

About the Author

Jonathan Kellerman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than three dozen crime novels, including the Alex Delaware series, The Butcher’s Theater, Billy Straight, The Conspiracy Club, Twisted, True Detectives, and The Murderer’s Daughter.

He co-authored Double Homicide and Capital Crimes with his wife, bestselling novelist Faye Kellerman, and The Golem of Hollywood and The Golem of Paris with his son, bestselling novelist Jesse Kellerman. He is also the author of two children’s books and several nonfiction works, including Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children and With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars. He has won the Goldwyn, Edgar, and Anthony awards.

The Future of Work: A Review of ‘The Remote Leadership Playbook’

‘The Remote Leadership Playbook’ is the new business management book by Désirée Cubadda. Photo: Désirée Cubadda, used with permission.

Book Review: The Remote Leadership Playbook

How to Build Trust, Manage Virtual Teams, and Drive Lasting Performance in a Hybrid World

By Désirée Cubadda

Synopsis

It’s undeniable: the workplace has changed, and leadership has had to change with it. Remote and hybrid work are no longer temporary arrangements, they are part of how modern teams operate. Yet, many leaders still rely on management practices designed for a world where people shared an office, communication happened face-to-face, and performance was easy to see. (Amazon, 2026)

At a distance, those practices break down:

  • Messages get misread.
  • Workloads become invisible.
  • Quiet team members become hard to read.

Leaders often struggle with how much to check in, how much autonomy to give, and how to track performance without slipping into micromanagement. The challenge isn’t just managing work remotely; it’s learning how to lead effectively when physical presence can no longer substitute for trust, clarity, and accountability.

The Remote Leadership Playbook is a practical, evidence-based guide to doing just that. At its center is the Future-Ready Leadership™ Model, built around three essential pillars: Trust, Autonomy, and Agility. It addresses the real friction of leading at a distance: misread communication, uneven visibility, weakened connection, and the tension between freedom and accountability.

📖Get your copy of The Remote Leadership Playbook today!

Review

The Remote Leadership Playbook tackles one of the biggest challenges facing today’s workplace: how to lead effectively when your team isn’t sitting in the same room. It provides actionable tools to navigate the delicate trust-control paradox without resorting to digital surveillance, while giving employees the freedom to do their best work.

Key Themes and Topics

  • Sustainable Performance: Shifting the focus from tracking hours to managing team energy to prevent burnout.
  • Structured Freedom: Giving employees real autonomy while establishing the structural clarity needed to stay on track.
  • Distributed Accountability: Strengthening performance and ownership without relying on constant, invasive oversight.
  • Global Collaboration: Maintaining engagement, connection, and growth across hybrid and globally dispersed teams through intentional feedback and coaching.

Book Structure & Contents

The book is organized into three core parts, each concluding with an actionable “Playbook” section featuring real-life scenarios and checklists:

  • Part I: Trust – The Relational Foundation
    • Chapter 1: Trust First: Leading Without the Safety of Visibility
    • Chapter 2: The Trust-Control Paradox: Leading Without Overreach or Absence
    • Chapter 3: Clarity as a Signal: Communicating the Why at Distance
    • Chapter 4: Human at a Distance: Empathy, Presence, and Psychological Safety
  • Part II: Autonomy – The Structural Foundation
    • Chapter 5: Structure Creates Freedom: Defining Roles, Goals, and Rhythm
    • Chapter 6: Growth Without Oversight: Feedback and Coaching for Autonomous Teams
    • Chapter 7: From Monitoring to Meaning: Using Control Systems the Right Way
  • Part III: Agility – The Learning Foundation
    • Chapter 8: Leading Across Difference: Culture, Bias, and Adaptive Thinking
    • Chapter 9: The New Stability: Empowerment and Continuous Learning
    • Chapter 10: Sustaining Performance: Designing Work That Lasts

Standout Highlights

  • Chapter 3 (Clarity & Communication): Explains how leaders can use communication to make trust visible. As the book notes:

“The goal is to help you design communication so that people know where they stand, why decisions are made, and how they can contribute without having to guess.”

  • Chapter 4 (The Human Side): Emphasizes empathy and presence. Without in-person cues, assumptions spread faster, making emotional intelligence critical to keeping teams connected.
  • Chapter 8 (Culture & Bias): Examines how workplace bias influences leadership. It notes that the most dominant communication style often sets the tone, not because it’s more effective, but because it’s the most visible.

Readability and Format

The language is clear and free of complicated business jargon. Each chapter ends with a Key Takeaways summary section with bullet points for easy reading, making it a convenient reference guide you can return to frequently.

Final Verdict

Cubadda emphasizes managing energy rather than simply tracking time, recognizing that preventing burnout is essential to long-term productivity. The Remote Leadership Playbook makes a compelling case that physical presence was never the point of great leadership; performance and clarity were.

For anyone navigating the evolving world of remote or hybrid work, this is a sharp and practical guide to leading with confidence, no matter where your team logs on.

“In virtual environments, teams rarely expect leaders to have all the answers. They expect steadiness. When leadership behaviour remains recognisable in both calm and crisis, trust deepens.”

Rating: 4 out of 5.

** Thank you to Désirée Cubadda for the gifted copy for review consideration. I haven’t been compensated for this review and all views and opinions expressed are my own.

About The Author

Désirée Cubadda is an MBA graduate, leadership researcher, and international business leader with more than 15 years of experience leading diverse teams across industries and cultures.

Combining academic research with real-world leadership experience, she developed the Future-Ready Leadership™ Model to help leaders build trust, create clarity, and sustain high performance across distance.

What Is a Conversation Architect? The Critical New Role in the Age of AI

‘Garbage In, Faster’ is a companion to ‘Connecting Goals to Impacts and Outcomes.’ Photo: Amazon

Book Spotlight: Garbage In, Faster: Why AI Needs Conversation Architects

By Claude Hanhart

Synopsis: The Alignment Paradox

“AI doesn’t remove the need for human alignment. It amplifies it.”

From the co-author of the #1 Amazon Kindle Bestseller Connecting Goals to Impacts and Outcomes comes a provocative companion: a book exploring why AI makes human conversation skills more essential than ever. (Amazon, 2026)

Across industries, organizations rushed to lay off Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches, only to immediately adopt AI. They eliminated the very people responsible for creating organizational alignment and bought a technology that makes alignment more critical than ever.

The result? Garbage in, faster.

Fascinatingly, Garbage In, Faster was written in collaboration with Anthropic’s Claude AI, with the entire manuscript generated in under 60 seconds. However, those 60 seconds only worked because of the hours of structured conversation that preceded them and the twenty years of expertise behind those conversations. In short: the process of writing this book proved its thesis.

What You’ll Learn

  • The Diagnosis: Why “agile is dead” is the wrong conclusion, and what actually failed.
  • Communication Debt: The invisible liability quietly destroying your organization.
  • The AI Multiplier: Why AI multiplies clarity and confusion equally and how you choose which one wins.
  • Syntax & Infrastructure: How VERB + NOUN syntax creates infrastructure for both humans and AI.
  • Context Engineering: Why “context engineering” is just Structured Conversations by another name.
  • The Unautomatable: The five conversations AI can never have for you.
  • The New Role: How to become a Conversation Architect, the role organizations need most right now.
  • Actionable Steps: Five conversations you can have on Monday morning using no new tools.

Who This Book Is For

  • Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches wondering what comes next in their careers.
  • Product Managers whose AI tools produce beautiful, meaningless artifacts.
  • Executives who invested in AI but aren’t seeing the promised results.
  • Anyone who suspects that better conversations might actually be the answer.

Note: This is a companion to Connecting Goals to Impacts and Outcomes: Harnessing Structured Conversations for Customer-Driven Value Delivery. While that book provides the complete toolkit, this one is the vital argument for why that toolkit is now existential.

Structure the Conversation. Deliver the Outcome.

About the Author

Claude Hanhart is a Product Strategist and Agile Coach with over 10 years of leadership experience driving groundbreaking product strategies and agile transformations. His approach centers on fostering innovation rooted in business objectives, customer experience, and market leadership using tools like Generative AI, OKRs, and Behavior-Driven Development (BDD).

Claude brings a uniquely interdisciplinary perspective to modern product challenges, holding an MA in Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology and Languages from the University of Berne in Switzerland and an MA in Geography from the University of Minnesota. Multilingual in German, Swiss German, and French, he thrives in international collaborations.

Structured Conversations represents Claude’s commitment to bridging strategic thinking with practical implementation. Currently based in New Jersey with his wife, Claude finds that their three energetic dogs serve as daily reminders of the importance of clear communication and patient guidance, principles that translate beautifully into his professional coaching work.

Are you leveraging AI to speed up your work, or are you just accelerating the chaos?