NOTABLE 100
59
Grind City
by Gary Hardwick
A black woman is murdered in a police precinct. Charges of brutality are leveled on law enforcement and Detroit is in society’s crosshairs. Danny Cavanaugh, a white cop raised in an all-black neighborhood, has a compelling reason to work the case: the murdered woman was his beautiful and provocative sister-in-law. Danny takes up an unauthorized investigation, always one step behind the ruthless killer. But as he closes in, the case takes a turn that plunges Danny into the abyss of the criminal mind, where he finds a motive more evil than murder. “In his fourth novel, Danny Cavanaugh faces the stark reality of being a cop and the father of a son. Police brutality is a hotbutton issue but as usual, Mr. Cavanaugh sees through the surface of the issue into the core of its origin and it is as ugly as you can imagine. This story lingered in my mind for a while until the world woke it up in a most murderous fashion.”
144 D E C E M B E R / J A N U A R Y
2017
60
Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement by Les Landes
Few trends in recent years have captured the fervor of the business world like the quest to unleash the full potential of people in the workplace. While some efforts have been fruitful, significant employee engagement remains largely untapped. Getting over that hurdle begins with a thought-provoking premise about the main differences between human beings and other living creatures—imagination and free will. This book tells the story of two principal characters: Tom Payton, a human resources and employee communications manager who’s looking for insights on employee engagement, and David Kay, an enigmatic consultant who guides Tom on a curious journey of discovery. “It’s easy to drown in the sea of remedies being thrust at the business world for optimizing employee performance. I struggled with it for years both as a corporate executive and later as a consultant to organizations looking for a new path to the promised land of extraordinary employee engagement.”