As the holiday season looms, all of us at the Centre for Corporate Public Affairs wish you a festive and fabulous time with your loved ones, and some down time from managing issues, reputations, stakeholders, team members, budgets, up, down, and across.

If you are in the mood for some serious holiday reading that can give you a professional edge in 2018, or want to park your brain in an intellectual Club Med for a few hours a day, I have compiled my list of some of the best business and management books of 2017, some now in release for 2018, and a few classics that have proved the tests of time, and remain must-reads for leaders in corporate public affairs.

And before you close your laptop for the last time in 2017, take a quick look at the Centre’s professional development calendar, mark a few dates to look after your own professional development next year, and quickly register online. Think of it as an early Christmas present for yourself, and a New Year gift for your employing organisation.

Best wishes for 2018, along with some best reads.

1. Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior, by Jonah Berger

2. The 10 Laws of Trust: Building the Bonds That Make a Business Great, by Professor Joel C. Peterson

3. Animal Farm, George Orwell

4. On Tyranny, by Timothy Snyder

5. Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance

6. Friend & Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both, by Adam Galinsky and Maurice Schweitzer

7. Are You Fully Charged?: The 3 Keys to Energizing Your Work and Life, by Tom Rath

8. Grit to Great: How Perseverance, Passion, and Pluck Take You from Ordinary to Extraordinary, by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval

9. Sprint, by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, and Braden Kowitz

10. The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, by John C. Maxwell

11. Superbosses, by Sydney Finkelstein

12. The 7 Secrets of Neuron Leadership: What Top Military Commanders, Neuroscientists, and the Ancient Greeks Teach Us about Inspiring Teams, by W. Craig Reed, Gordon R. England

13. Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World, by Tim Ferriss 14. The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, by Chip and Dan Heath

15. Business Adventures, by John Brooks

16. First, Break All the Rules, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman

17. Option B, by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant

18. Disrupted, by Dan Lyons