Describes death customs and rituals from around the world, exploring how they compare to the impersonal American system and how mourners respond best when they participate in caring for the deceased.

"Best-selling author and licensed mortician Caitlin Doughty answers real questions from kids about death, dead bodies, and decomposition. Every day, funeral director Caitlin Doughty receives dozens of questions about death. What would happen to an astronaut's body if it were pushed out of a space shuttle? Do people poop when they die? Can Grandma have a Viking funeral? In the tradition of Randall Munroe's What If?, Doughty's new book, Will My Cat...

"A propulsive contemporary women's fiction debut with dark humor and messy yet warm-hearted family dynamics, perfect for fans of Claire Lombardo's The Most Fun We Ever Had and Emma Straub's All Adults Here. All families are messy. Some are disasters. Natalie Walker is the reason her older brother and sister went to prison over 15 years ago. She fled California shortly after that fateful night and hasn't spoken to anyone in her family since. Ten years...

"In the phantasmagorical town of Raven's End, nothing is as it seems. A misguided young girl takes refuge in a decrepit old mortuary. There she meets Montgomery Dark, an eccentric undertaker with more than a few skeletons in his closet. Montgomery chronicles the strange history of the town through a series of twisted tales, each more terrifying than the last, but the young girl's world is unhinged when she discovers that the final story is her own."...

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

"King George County, Virginia has its share of crime, but it's generally a good place to live and raise a family. So when a string of unusual murders sweeps through the county, J.J. Graves and her husband, Sheriff Jack Lawson, are left scratching their heads. But the victims have one thing in common--Malachi Graves--J.J.'s father. The world thinks he's dead, but J.J. knows that's just another one of his lies, and it's only a matter of time before...

Mary Crampton has spent all of her thirty years in Petroleum, a small Western town once supported by a powerful grain company. Living at home, she works as the embalmer in her fathers mortuary: an unlikely job that has long marked her as an outsider. Yet, to Mary there is a satisfying art to positioning and styling each body to capture the essence of a subjects life. Though some townsfolk pretend that the community is thriving, the truth is that Petroleum...