NCW Libraries

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...

The complicated lives and relationships of the Fisher family, owners and operators of an independent funeral home.

The complicated lives and relationships of the Fisher family, owners and operators of an independent funeral home.

"Set during Reconstruction-era New Orleans, this new work from the acclaimed author of Between Earth and Sky is a powerful story of human resilience--and of the unlikely bonds that hold fast even in our darkest moments. "The dead can't hurt you--only the living can." Effie Jones, a former slave who escaped to the Union side as a child, knows the truth of her words. Taken in by an army surgeon and his wife during the War, she learned to read and write,...

"Lorena Adler has a secret - she holds the power of the banished gods, the Noble and the Vile, inside her. She has hidden her entire life - both from the world and from her past. She's content to spend her days as an undertaker in a small town, marry her best friend, Julian, and live an unfulfilling life so long as no one uncovers her true nature. But when the notoriously bloodthirsty crown prince comes to arrest Julian's father, he immediately recognizes...

When the casket reached the front of the sanctuary, there was a loud cracking sound as the bottom fell out. And with a thump, down came Father Iggy. From shoot-outs at funerals to dead men screaming and runaway corpses, undertakers have plenty of unusual stories to tell and a special way of telling them. In this macabre and moving compilation, funeral directors across the country share their most embarrassing, jaw-dropping, irreverent, and deeply...

Dino and July, seventeen, are granted time to resolve what was left unfinished between them after July's sudden death, one year after their friendship ended over Dino's new relationship.

"What's the one secret no one knows about you? 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's body before his funeral, mortician 'Zig'...

The undertaker's wife waits; she weaves; she builds. The undertaker practices the Dismal Trade with consummate skill. He transforms the ugliness of death into a thing of dignity and beauty. Victims of every hazard in a raw West, in his hands, become presentable. Now the undertaker is called to disguise the suicide of a famous financier. Only his art can save America's financial markets. His wife's task on this day is secret, an act of understanding...

Daigo Kobayashi is a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved and finds himself without a job. He decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for work and start over. He answers a classified ad entitled 'Departures' thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency. He discovers that the job is actually for a 'Nokanshi' or 'encoffineer,' a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry...