Floyd Kemske is the author of five novels, including four "corporate nightmares," that is, novels that use fantastic situations to approach the realities of office politics, reorganizations and, especially, the management of people by other people. Each of the four novels is told in a dry, satirical manner, but is as frightening and insightful as it is humorous. In each of these novels, Kemske plays with an established genre: the thriller in Lifetime Employment, science fiction in The Virtual Boss, horror in Human Resources, and serial killing (of businesses) in Labor Day. Kemske lives in Pepperell, Massachusetts.
All five of Kemske's novels are now available free in PDF format!
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THE THIRD LION: A Novel About Talleyrand. Talleyrand, one of history's most vilified and unprincipled men, was also one of its most civilized. This Machiavellian statesman helped make and break both the French Revolution and Napoleon.
"Kemske, best known for his quirky takes on latter-day organization men, smoothly shifts THE VIRTUAL BOSS. Everyone wishes for the perfect manager. But what would happen if our wishes came true? An adaptive, interactive software system learns each employee's needs and weaknesses, and then effectively exploits them. Kemske's most frightening primer on management.
gears to deliver a wryly engrossing historical novel." —Kirkus Reviews
$22.95 cloth, 224 pp., ISBN-0945774-37-0. Also available as an e-book.
"The most intriguing computer character since HAL in 2001." —Library Journal HUMAN RESOURCES. Corporate management is the use of humans as resources. So is vampirism. When a vampire is called in to turn an ailing biotech company around, reorganization takes on a much paler cast.
$19.95 cloth, 237 pp., ISBN 0-945774-22-2. Also available as an e-book.
"Kemske understands that some of what's going on in corporate America is so horrible LABOR DAY. In his fourth "corporate nightmare," Kemske looks at the world of union organizing and union busting. The result is a darkly comic labor of lies.
that only fantasy can adequately depict it." —Cleveland Plain Dealer
$12.95 paper, 224 pp., ISBN 0-945774-29-X. Also available as an e-book.
"[A]n entertaining look at the tribulations of working stiffs, wherever they toil."
—New York Times Book Review
$22 cloth, 203 pp., ISBN-0945774-48-6. Also available as an e-book.LIFETIME EMPLOYMENT. Due to an extreme policy of lifetime employment, the only way to get ahead at Growth Services, Inc. is murder.
"Kemske blends black humor with a serious treatment of the individual's plight
within a closed, Kafkaesque society in his satiric first novel."
—Publishers Weekly
$19.95 cloth, 231 pp., ISBN 0-945774-18-4. Also available as an e-book.
More Praise for the Novels of Floyd Kemske
"There is more truth in [The Virtual Boss] than in all the consultants' babble for the next 12 months.
Oh, how I wish they would put him on the cover of Business Week!"
—David Warsh, Business Columnist, Boston Sunday Globe
"The Virtual Boss is a grimly funny parable, a timely novel."
—Los Angeles Times
"Like the best black comedy, Kemske creates worlds of the imagination that make the reader
first laugh, then blanch, and then grasp the painful plausibility."
—Boston Phoenix Literary Supplement
"Kemske, who may have started a new 'management novel' genre with Lifetime Employment, continues in that intriguing vein [in The Virtual Boss], creating the most perfect hell since Dante's Inferno and the most intriguing computer character since HAL in 2001."
—Library Journal
"[Human Resources is] a wonderfully ambiguous and deliciously wicked tale
leavened by humor in a jugular vein."
—Kirkus Reviews
"This tale of the Enlightenment's bitter end [The Third Lion] finds an apt teller in Kemske, who brings the irony and psychological acuity that his formidable protagonist demands."
—Publishers Weekly
"Told in a dry, matter-of-fact way, [Lifetime Employment] is a black comedy,
both hilarious and horrifying."
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"There are shades of Orwell, Kafka, and Woody Allen's Sleeper in The Virtual Boss.
"[The Virtual Boss is] a terrific read that crosses boundaries and will appeal to readers of all stripes."
Its scathing assessment of the corporate mentality is dead-on."
—Wired
—Boston Sunday Herald.
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