"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...

Killing a bird with his slingshot as a boy, William Bellman grows up a wealthy family man unaware of how his act of childhood cruelty will have terrible consequences until a wrenching tragedy compels him to enter into a macabre bargain with a stranger in black.

A magnificent epic tale of devotion, possession, obsession, and strange destiny from the author of the Hugo Award-winning

Paladin of Souls

Lois McMaster Bujold

The half-mad Prince Boleso has been slain by a noblewoman he had intended to defile — and Lord Ingrey kin Wilfcliff must transport the body to its burial place and the accused killer, the Lady Ijada, to judgment. With the death of the old Hallow King imminent and

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"The Unwilling is the story of Judah, a foundling born with a special gift and raised inside Highfall castle along with Gavin, the son and heir to Lord Elban's vast empire. Judah and Gavin share an unnatural bond that is both the key to her survival - and possibly her undoing. As Gavin is groomed for his future role, Judah comes to realize that she has no real position within the kingdom, in fact, no hope at all of ever traveling beyond its castle...

In North Devon, where two rivers converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his father's funeral takes place. Once loved and cherished, the day Matthew left the strict evangelical community he grew up in, he lost his family too. Now, as he turns and walks away again, he receives a call from one of his team. A body has been found on the beach nearby: a man with a tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to...

After Elizabeth, Will, and Captain Barbossa rescue Captain Jack Sparrow, who is trapped in Davy Jones' Locker, they must face their foes. Lord Cutler Beckett, now has control of Jones' heart and forms a dark alliance with him in order to rule the seas and wipe out the last of the Pirates. Jack, Barbossa, Will, Elizabeth, and crew must call the Pirate Lords from the four corners of the globe, including the infamous Sao Feng, together. The Pirate Lords...

Discusses the Egyptian preservation of dead bodies, stories associated with mummies, and mummies from different cultures, including Incan and Sicilian.

""Through story, poetry, and insightful reflections, reveals how ritual, community, and the sacred restore the original context of grief."--Provided by publisher"--

Thoughtful, amusing, and provocative, Making an Exit will transform the way you look at life's last passage. Because, as Murray discovers, death is, for many, not an ending but the start of something new. Author and journalist Sarah Murray never gave much thought to what might ultimately happen to her remains-that was, until her father died. While he'd always insisted that the "organic matter" left after a person takes their last breath had no significance,...