This remarkable collection of twelve short stories is about the diverse folk--black and white, young and old, rich and poor, rural and sophisticated--who live in the eastern North Carolina town of Tims Creek. Among the memorable characters are Clarence Pickett, who at age three began receiving messages from beyond the grave and whose gift seems tied to a hog's ability to talk; matronly Ida Perry, haunted by a boy her judge husband may have drowned years before; Dean Williams, hired to seduce the richest black man in Times Creek, yearning after innocence while he betrays love.
In an unnamed war, six dead soldiers refuse to allow themselves to be buried in the trench dug by two of their buddies, causing consternation among the army's generals.
Bury Your Dead is a novel about life and death—and all the mystery that remains—from #1 New York Times bestselling author Louise Penny Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is on break from duty in Three Pines to attend the famed Winter Carnival up north. He has arrived in this beautiful, freezing city not to join the revels but to recover from an investigation gone hauntingly wrong. Still, violent death is inescapable—even here, in the apparent sanctuary of the Literary and Historical Society, where one obsessive academic’s quest for answers will lead Gamache down a dark path. . . Meanwhile, Gamache is receiving disturbing news from his hometown village. Beloved bistro owner Olivier was recently convicted of murder but everyone—including Gamache—believes that he is innocent. Who is behind this sinister plot? Now it’s up to Gamache to solve this killer case. . .and relive a terrible event from his own past before he can begin to bury his dead. “Few writers in any genre can match Penny’s ability to combine heartbreak and hope.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
EVERY DAY in Africa, approximately 7,000 men, women, and children are erased from the face of this planet by the devastating AIDS virus that -- even after more than two and a half decades -- continues to wreak havoc around the globe, especially in underdeveloped nations. No Place Left to Bury the Dead dares to go where media, governments, and ordinary individuals in the West seldom venture -- face-to-face with fellow humans suffering in the shadow of our collective ignorance and neglect. In this haunting investigation, acclaimed journalist Nicole Itano goes beyond traditional journalistic methods as she eats, sleeps, and lives with the women who struggle daily with the raging epidemic of AIDS. Working from the personal accounts of a few real women living with the disease, Itano traces their moments of discovery and diagnosis, their first symptoms, and the ways they cope with treatment and manage the news with their families. Itano's masterful blend of the personal, scientific, and historical turns statistics into stories and balances tragedy with hope as she outlines the scope of new treatment and prevention. In a time when celebrity and political heavy hitters such as Bono and Bill Clinton are rushing to find a remedy for Africa's increasing problem, No Place Left to Bury the Dead shows the world how the transformation of a few courageous women can heal entire communities and eradicate denial, and how books like these increase global awareness of one of the worst epidemics in human history. Like And the Band Played On and The Coming Plague, this book is a wake-up call that is urgently needed.
By the time Nate Fisher was laid to rest in a woodland grave sans coffin in the final season of Six Feet Under, Americans all across the country were starting to look outside the box when death came calling. Grave Matters follows families who found in "green" burial a more natural, more economic, and ultimately more meaningful alternative to the tired and toxic send-off on offer at the local funeral parlor. Eschewing chemical embalming and fancy caskets, elaborate and costly funerals, they have embraced a range of natural options, new and old, that are redefining a better American way of death. Environmental journalist Mark Harris examines this new green burial underground, leading you into natural cemeteries and domestic graveyards, taking you aboard boats from which ashes and memorial "reef balls" are cast into the sea. He follows a family that conducts a home funeral, one that delivers a loved one to the crematory, and another that hires a carpenter to build a pine coffin. In the morbidly fascinating tradition of Stiff, Grave Matters details the embalming process and the environmental aftermath of the standard funeral. Harris also traces the history of burial in America, from frontier cemeteries to the billion-dollar business it is today, reporting on real families who opted for more simple, natural returns. For readers who want to follow the examples of these families and, literally, give back from the grave, appendices detail everything you need to know, from exact costs and laws to natural burial providers and their contact information.
Late pastor Ron Dunn's acclaimed book clarifies the differences between true and counterfeit faith, showing faith's rewards to be more about experiencing God's presence than in earthly blessings.
To Bury the Dead is an investigation of a brutal political murder and fascinating literary feud hidden by the dust of the Spanish Civil War. A story about real people whose lives were caught up in and shattered by political events, it exposes power power struggles, ideological feuds and deadly political rivalries.
A New York Times and Los Angeles Times Bestseller “Doughty chronicles [death] practices with tenderheartedness, a technician’s fascination, and an unsentimental respect for grief.” —Jill Lepore, The New Yorker Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty embarks on a global expedition to discover how other cultures care for the dead. From Zoroastrian sky burials to wish-granting Bolivian skulls, she investigates the world’s funerary customs and expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with dignity. Her account questions the rituals of the American funeral industry—especially chemical embalming—and suggests that the most effective traditions are those that allow mourners to personally attend to the body of the deceased. Exquisitely illustrated by artist Landis Blair, From Here to Eternity is an adventure into the morbid unknown, a fascinating tour through the unique ways people everywhere confront mortality.
