Keiko Furukura had always been considered a strange child, and her parents always worried how she would get on in the real world, so when she takes on a job in a convenience store while at university, they are delighted for her. For her part, in the convenience store she finds a predictable world mandated by the store manual, which dictates how the workers should act and what they should say, and she copies her coworkers' style of dress and speech...

An ordinary man, reduced by years of oppressive office routine to a shadow existence, makes a supreme effort to turn his dull life into something wonderful after receiving a terminal diagnosis.

"Avery Keene, a brilliant young law clerk for the legendary Justice Howard Wynn, is doing her best to hold her life together—excelling in an arduous job with the court while also dealing with a troubled family. When the shocking news breaks that Justice Wynn—the cantankerous swing vote on many current high-profile cases—has slipped into a coma, Avery’s life turns upside down. She is immediately notified that Justice Wynn has left instructions...

In this screwball comedy, a cubicle slave tires of mind-numbing corporate life and actively tries to get fired. Instead, his "straight-shooting" attitude gets him promoted, where he can play out his grand embezzling scheme.

Publisher's description: A lawyer working for a Supreme Court judge makes the mistake of revealing to another lawyer a ruling about to be announced. The other is in fact an impostor and threatens to reveal the indiscretion unless he is paid money. The lawyer and his friends mount an operation to fix the blackmailer. A first novel

"No one knows us quite the same way as the men and women who sit beside us in department meetings and crowd the office refrigerator with their labeled yogurts. Every office is a family of sorts, and the ad agency Joshua Ferris depicts in his debut novel is family at its strangest and best, coping with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks." "Among the coworkers fighting for their...

Inappropriate behavior is business as usual, but big surprises are in store! Dwight is now the owner of the building and he may be letting this power go to his head; Andy is courting Erin, who is dating Gabe; Jim and Pam are struggling with being new parents; and a parade of ghosts of girlfriends past haunt Michael, leading to his final days at Dunder Mifflin.

Shy, depressed, young, lonely and usually broke, Vermont-bred Mirabelle Butterfield sells gloves at the Beverly Hills Neiman Marcus; at night, she watches TV with her two cats. The plot follows Mirabelle's search for love or at least romance and companionship with middle-aged Ray Porter, a womanizing Seattle millionaire who may, or may not, have hidden redeeming qualities.

Cassie Woodson is adrift. After suffering an epic tumble down the corporate ladder, Cassie finds the only way she can pay her bills is to take a thankless temp job reviewing correspondence for a large-scale fraud suit. The daily drudgery amplifies all that her life is lacking—love, friends, stability—and leaves her with too much time on her hands, which she spends fixating on the mistakes that brought her to this point. While sorting through a...

Mike Cranshaw has a chance meeting with Sue Claussen when she checks into the roadside motel owned by Mike's parents in Arizona. A bottle of wine 'compliments of management' jump starts a cross-country journey and unique courtship between two different kinds of people who are both ultimately looking for the same thing: a sense of happiness. Mike sees something special in button downed Sue that inspires him to take a chance and hit the road to go after...