October Picks | The Best of Foreign Fiction and Non-Fiction

STOP PRESS! Our long held maxim—that understanding the customer is the crux of innovation—is wrong. Customers don’t buy products or services; they “hire” them to do a job. Understanding customers does not drive innovation success, he argues. Understanding customer jobs does.

The ‘Jobs to Be Done’ approach can be seen in some of the world’s most respected companies and fast-growing startups, including Amazon, Intuit, Uber, Airbnb, and Chobani yogurt, to name just a few. But this book is not about celebrating these successes—it’s about predicting new ones. The authors contend that by understanding what causes customers to “hire” a product or service, any business can improve its innovation track record, creating products that customers not only want to hire, but that they’ll pay premium prices to bring into their lives. Jobs theory offers new hope for growth to companies frustrated by their hit and miss efforts.

Available here: http://amzn.to/2eZBJL7

Nujeen Mustafa has cerebral palsy. This did not stop her travelling, with her sister, 4000 miles from Syria to Hungary in a wheelchair. Having taught herself to speak English by watching US soap-operas on Syrian TV, she made her way to the Hungarian border in the hope of asylum in Germany, where she has told her story, with Christina Lamb – bestselling co-author of I Am Malala. A sixteen-year-old Syrian girl, she has the courage of a lion. Nujeen is the story of our times told through one remarkable girl.

Available here: http://amzn.to/2eZA3Bh

‘The title means what it says. There’s plenty of scandal here: arson, double suicide, dead cats flung at curtain calls. At the same time, the book is energetically researched, beautifully written – fun, relaxed, sophisticated – and full of serious ideas, boldly stated’ — Joan Acocella, The New Yorker

Available here: http://amzn.to/2eyWAka

Award-winning cookbook author and television host Padma Lakshmi, inspired by her life of traveling across the globe, brings together the world’s spices and herbs in a vibrant, comprehensive alphabetical guide. This definitive culinary reference book is illustrated with rich color photographs that capture the essence of a diverse range of spices and their authentic flavors. Encyclopedia of Spices and Herbs includes complete descriptions, histories, and cooking suggestions for ingredients from basic herbs to the most exotic seeds and chilies, as well as information on toasting spices, making teas, and infusing various oils and vinegars.

Available here: http://amzn.to/2eB1vCQ

Obayda’s family is in need of some good fortune. Her father lost one of his legs in a bomb explosion, forcing the family to move from their home city of Kabul to a small village, where life is very different and Obayda’s father almost never leaves his room.
One day, Obayda’s aunt has an idea to bring the family luck—dress Obayda, the youngest of her sisters, as a boy, a bacha posh. Now Obayda is Obayd.
Life in this in-between place is confusing, but once Obayda meets another bacha posh, everything changes. The two of them can explore the village on their own, climbing trees, playing sports, and more. But their transformation won’t last forever—unless the two best friends can figure out a way to make it stick and make their newfound freedoms endure.

Available here: http://amzn.to/2eB1rTH

James Gleick is one of the greatest science writers in the English language. Written with the skill of the best literary fiction, Time Travel will have a broad appeal, relevant to anyone interested in time travel, from Proust to Doctor Who. Gleick’s story begins at the turn of the twentieth century with the young H.G. Wells writing and rewriting the fantastic tale that became his first book, an international sensation, The Time Machine. A host of forces were converging to transmute the human understanding of time, some philosophical and some technological — the electric telegraph, the steam railroad, the discovery of buried civilizations, and the perfection of clocks.

Gleick tracks the evolution of time travel as an idea in the culture — from Marcel Proust to
Doctor Who, from Woody Allen to Jorge Luis Borges. He explores the inevitable looping
paradoxes and examines the porous boundary between pulp fiction and modern physics.
Finally, he delves into a temporal shift that is unsettling our own moment: the
instantaneous wired world, with its all-consuming present and vanishing future.

Available here: http://amzn.to/2eySo4d

From bestselling children’s author David Walliams…

Miranda loves to be different, and on Bring-your-pet-to-school Day she introduces
everyone to her very DIFFERENT pet…
Penelope the snake.
Miss Bloat the headmistress doesn’t think snakes should be allowed in school. But
Penelope has other ideas…Introducing a spectacularly slithery new picture book packed with mischief and mayhem from two superstars!

Available here: http://amzn.to/2eyWwB5

From Meg Cabot, the author of The Princess Diaries.

Reed Stewart thought he’d left all his small town troubles—including a broken heart—behind when he ditched tiny Bloomville, Indiana, ten years ago to become rich and famous on the professional golf circuit. Then one tiny post on the Internet causes all of those troubles to return . . . with a vengeance.

Becky Flowers has worked hard to build her successful senior relocation business, but she’s worked even harder to forget Reed Stewart ever existed. She has absolutely no intention of seeing him when he returns—until his family hires her to save his parents.
Now Reed and Becky can’t avoid one another—or the memories of that one fateful night. And soon everything they thought they knew about themselves (and each other) has been turned upside down, and they—and the entire town of Bloomville—might never be the same, all because The Boy Is Back.

Available here: http://amzn.to/2eyXaP0