The Barnes & Conti Bookshelf

Murder on Retreat
A Corporate Mystery

Sarah Hawthorne is a successful organizational consultant. She has big plans to overhaul Martech Corporation’s outdated business model, so she’s surprised when the CEO hires an eccentric business guru named Scorpio who claims to be Martech’s savior. Scorpio and his cronies plan an executive retreat at a posh Napa Valley resort, and despite her misgivings, Sarah agrees to participate

The retreat is a disaster. Scorpio is more of a cult leader than a corporate consultant, and Martech’s executive team rebels against Scorpio’s intense and inflammatory tactics. They don’t realize, however, that he won’t be a problem much longer. The next morning, Scorpio is found dead in the sauna.

Sarah immediately throws herself into solving the mystery of Scorpio’s murder, much to the annoyance of her husband. But soon she unlocks old employment secrets, broken promises, and shady financial alliances, all while fighting off her growing attraction to one of the murder suspects. Scorpio isn’t the only one who ends up dead, however, and Sarah’s powers of deduction eventually put her in the danger zone.

Murder On Retreat, the sequel to Murder On The 33rd Floor, is the second in B. Kim Barnes’s series of witty mysteries starring Sarah Hawthorne.

About the Author

B. Kim Barnes is the CEO of Barnes & Conti Associates, Inc., of Berkeley, California, an independent learning and organization development firm. She has had over 30 years of experience in the fields of management, leadership, and organization development, working in both internal and external roles in a broad range of industries. Kim is a frequent speaker at national and international professional conferences. Her articles have been published in professional journals in the U.S. and abroad. She is the primary developer of leadership programs such as Exercising Influence, Constructive Negotiation, The Mastery of Change, Inspirational Leadership, Intelligent Risk-Taking, Creating a Culture for Risk and Innovation, C.O.A.C.H. for Peak Performance, Applied Creativity, The Art of Communication, and Leading World-Class Teams, all of which are copyrighted programs of Barnes & Conti. She co-developed the popular program, Managing Innovation, Driving Ideas from Strategic Initiative to Value Creation along with Dr. David Francis, of the University of Brighton's Centre for Research in Innovation Management.