Fascinated by our pervasive terror of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for their dead. In rural Indonesia, she observes a man clean and dressed, his grandfather's mummified body. Grandpa's mummy has lived in the family home for two years, where the family has maintained a warm and respectful relationship. She meets Bolivian Natitas, who are cigarette-smoking, wish-granting human skulls, and introduces...

Presents a novel about high school football in a small Texas town, a place in which football has become a religion.

Examines the different rites, rituals, and ceremonies involved in remembering the dead in cultures and religions around the world. Includes an activity, color photographs, a glossary, and further resources.

A recently widowed grandmother is determined to grant her husband's last wish, that she set his ashes free over the idyllic bluff they called Annie's Point. When her son Richard refuses to let his mother make the two thousand-mile trip, she takes off anyway with her free-spirited granddaughter in tow.

"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...

Why do we die? Why can't we live forever? What happens to us after death? Moving between science and culture, After Life: Ways We Think About Death takes a straightforward look at these and other questions long taboo in our society. By showing the fascinating, diverse ways in which we understand death, both today and throughout our history, the book also shines a light on what it is to be human. Each chapter includes a brief telling of a death legend,...

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.

When they find a dead bird, a group of children bury it in the woods, sing a song to it, and put flowers on the grave.

"For anyone who has ever felt stuck on the wrong path comes a stunning, time-bending love story that challenges what it means to get things "right," and who's at your side through it all What would you do if you had one more chance for the life of your dreams? Lou feels like she is stuck on the wrong path: alone, in a city far from home, watching other people be happy. When the man she's in love with announces his engagement to someone else, Lou is...