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"A deeply compelling exploration of the death industry and the people--morticians, detectives, crime scene cleaners, embalmers, executioners--who work in it and what led them there. We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet from a young age, we are told that death is something to be feared. How are we supposed to know what we're so afraid of, when we are never given the chance to look? Fueled by...
Author
Description
Caught up in a moment of boyhood competition, William Bellman recklessly aims his slingshot at a rook resting on a branch, killing the bird instantly. It is a small but cruel act, and is soon forgotten. By the time he is grown, with a wife and children of his own, William seems to have put the whole incident behind him. It was as if he never killed the thing at all. But rooks don’t forget. Years later, when a stranger mysteriously enters William’s...
Author
Description
Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for the dead. In rural Indonesia, she watches a man clean and dress his grandfather's mummified body, which has resided in the family home for two years. In La Paz, she meets Bolivian natitas (cigarette-smoking, wish-granting human skulls), and in Tokyo she encounters the Japanese kotsuage ceremony, in which relatives use chopsticks...
5) Bleachers
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Description
From the best-selling author of The Painted House, Skipping Christmas, and The Firm comes a nostalgic novel about high school football in a small Texas town, a place in which football has become a religion. High school all-American Neely Crenshaw was probably the best quarterback ever to play for the legendary Messina Spartans. Fifteen years have gone by since those glory days, and Neely has come home to Messina to bury Coach Eddie Rake, the man who...
6) Speechless
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Appears on list
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If being stuffed into last year's dress pants at his cousin Patrick's wake weren't uncomfortable enough, Jimmy is told by his mother that he has to give the eulogy at the funeral the next day. What could he possibly say? Patrick ruined everything they did, and Jimmy can't recall one birthday party, family gathering, or school event with him that didn't result in injury or destruction. Then he realizes that sometimes it's not the words spoken but what...
Author
Description
Seventeen-year-old Matt wears a black suit every day. No, not because his mom died--although she did, but he wears the suit for his gig at the local funeral home, which pays way better than the Cluck Bucket, and he needs the income since his dad can’t handle the bills. So while Dad’s snagging bottles of whiskey, Matt’s snagging fifteen bucks an hour. Then Matt meets Lovey. Crazy name, and she’s been through more crazy stuff than he can imagine....
Author
Publisher
Jove
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
When a woman travels to Nigeria to attend the funeral of the father she never knew, she meets an over-the-top family, a new love interest, and discovers parts of herself she didn't know were missing in this engrossing novel from Jane Igharo, the acclaimed author of Ties That Tether. Hannah Bailey has never had a relationship with her father, the Nigerian businessman who had a fling with her white mother, so she's always felt clueless about part of...
Author
Description
Today should be one of the worst days of seventeen-year-old Hadley Sullivan's life. She's stuck at JFK, late to her father's second wedding, which is taking place in London and involves a soon to be step-mother that Hadley's never even met. Then she meets the perfect boy in the airport's cramped waiting area. His name is Oliver, he's British, and he's in seat 18C. Hadley's in 18A. Twists of fate and quirks of timing play out in this thoughtful novel...
Author
Description
Although his father has forbidden it, Ernie, a twelve-year-old business tycoon, makes a tidy profit in the pet funeral business, but when he refuses to give his star employee a raise and the business starts to fall apart, it takes the death of his own dog to bring everyone back together. Ernie is a twelve-year old tycoon, always on the lookout for a fast buck. This time he stumbles onto a money-making bonanza: pet funerals. He hires Dusty to decorate...
Author
Publisher
Hogarth, an imprint of Random House
Pub. Date
[2021]
Description
A telephone call informs Krishan that his grandmother's caretaker, Rani, has died in unexpected circumstances -- found at the bottom of the village well, her neck broken. The news coincides with the arrival of an email from Anjum, an impassioned yet aloof activist Krishan fell in love with years before while living in Delhi. Krishan makes the long journey by train from Colombo into the war-torn Northern Provice for Rani's funeral.
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Death is scary—but planning your funeral doesn't have to be. Benjamin helps demystify death, decrease your anxiety, and put the fun back in funeral, whether that means a drunken bacchanal or a somber reflection on just how great you were. Every stage of the legacy planning process is considered, from a burial outfit to a funeral theme. Practical and cheeky questions alike are answered, including: What is the most eco-friendly burial method? Can...
Author
Description
This story of a young woman's confrontation with death and her past is a poetic study of human relations. "The Optimist's Daughter" is the story of Laurel McKelva Hand, a young woman who has left the South and returns, years later, to New Orleans, where her father is dying. After his death, she and her silly young stepmother go back still farther, to the small Mississippi town where she grew up. Alone in the old house, Laurel finally comes to an understanding...
16) Jazz
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In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe's wife, Violet, attacks the girl's corpse. This passionate, profound story of love and obsession brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of Black urban life.
19) The second sleep
Author
Description
"From the internationally best-selling author of Fatherland and the Cicero Trilogy--a chilling and dark new thriller unlike anything Robert Harris has done before. 1468. A young priest, Christopher Fairfax, arrives in a remote Exmoor village to conduct the funeral of his predecessor. The land around is strewn with ancient artifacts--coins, fragments of glass, human bones--which the old parson used to collect. Did his obsession with the past lead to...
Author
Formats
Description
Doughty blends her mortician’s knowledge of the body and the intriguing history behind common misconceptions about corpses to offer answers to thirty-five distinctive questions posed by her youngest fans. She details lore and science of what happens to, and inside, our bodies after we die. What causes bodies to turn colors during decomposition? And why do hair and nails appear longer after death? Readers will learn the best soil for mummifying your...