"Archie Mint has a secret. He's led a charmed life. He's got a beautiful wife, two impressive kids, and a successful military career. But when he's killed while trying to stop a robbery in his own home, his family is shattered and then shocked when the other shoe drops. Mint's been hiding criminal secrets none of them could have imagined. While working on Mint{u2019}s body before his funeral, mortician Zig Zigarowski discovers something he was never...

"As a Gracekeeper, Callanish administers shoreside burials, laying the dead to their final resting place deep in the depths of the ocean. Alone on her island, she has exiled herself to a life of tending watery graves as penance for a long-ago mistake that still haunts her. Meanwhile, North works as a circus performer with the Excalibur, a floating troupe of acrobats, clowns, dancers, and trainers who sail from one archipelago to the next, entertaining...

"Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for the dead. From Here to Eternity is an immersive global journey that introduces compelling, powerful rituals almost entirely unknown in America. 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,...

After a terrible car accident, Anna wakes to find the funeral director is preparing her body for her own funeral. Convincing her that she is in transition to the afterlife, the funeral director is leading Anna to accept her own death. But Paul, Anna's grief-stricken boyfriend, can't shake the nagging suspicion that the funeral director is not what he appears to be. As Paul gets close to unlocking the truth, it may be too late as Anna may have already...

"Four years ago, the Eternal Slumber Funeral Home put Chicken Teater in the ground. Now undertaker Emma Lee Raines is digging him back up. The whole scene is bad for business, especially with her granny running for mayor and a big festival setting up in town. But ever since Emma Lee started seeing ghosts, Chicken's been pestering her to figure out who killed him." --

What self-respecting undertaker would allow himself to get involved in a murder investigation, a series of dirty videos, a case of political blackmail, and police corruption, as well as one of the worst amateur theater productions in recent memory? None, unless your name happens to be Hitchcock Sewell, the most charming suspense hero to come along in years. And who knew an undertaker could look so good? In this fast-paced and enormously entertaining...

Here is the classic anatomy of America's funeral practices, revised, expanded, and brought up-to-date for a new generation. This revised edition contains completely new chapters on, among other things, prepayment ("Pay Now - Die Poorer") and the new multinational corporations ("A Global Village of the Dead"), as well as a jaundiced look at the failure of the Federal Trade Commission to enforce the laws that the original edition of this book helped...

"Violet Hart is a photographer who has always returned to cobble out a life for herself in the oddly womblike interiors of Detroit. Nearing forty, shes keenly aware that the time for artistic recognition is running out. When her lover, Bill, a Detroit mortician, needs a photograph of a body, she agrees to take the picture. Its an artistic success and Violet is energized by the subject matter, persuading Bill to allow her to take pictures of some of...

Libby, a former flame of Hitchcock Sewell, has returned to town with her two children, but minus one husband and one nanny. Libby's husband has been accounted for — she left him back in Annapolis. However, the nanny, Sophie, is truly missing. As soon as Hitch starts to nose around, Sophie turns up — literally — in the Severn River. She's quite dead, and just a little bit pregnant. The police suspect suicide, but Sophie's mom is adamant it's...

"In this series debut from New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong, a modern-day homicide detective finds herself in Victorian Scotland-in an unfamiliar body-with a killer on the loose. May 20, 2019: Homicide detective Mallory is in Edinburgh to be with her dying grandmother. While out on a jog one evening, Mallory hears a woman in distress. She's drawn to an alley, where she is attacked and loses consciousness. May 20, 1869: Housemaid...