Funeral Girl


Book Description

Sixteen-year-old Georgia Richter feels conflicted about the funeral home her parents run—especially because she has the ability to summon ghosts. With one touch of any body that passes through Richter Funeral Home, she can awaken the spirit of the departed. With one more touch, she makes the spirit disappear, to a fate that remains mysterious to Georgia. To cope with her deep anxiety about death, she does her best to fulfill the final wishes of the deceased whose ghosts she briefly revives. Then her classmate Milo's body arrives at Richter—and his spirit wants help with unfinished business, forcing Georgia to reckon with her relationship to grief and mortality.




The Doll Funeral


Book Description

“[Evokes] both Jeanette Winterson and Ian McEwan . . . an elegiac and uplifting novel about the indissoluble bonds between mothers and daughters, and a reminder of how the imagination can set you free.” — The Guardian On Ruby’s thirteenth birthday, a wish she didn’t even know she had suddenly comes true: the couple who raised her aren’t her parents at all. Her real mother and father are out there somewhere, and Ruby becomes determined to find them. Venturing into the forest with nothing but a suitcase and the company of her only true friend—the imaginary Shadow Boy—Ruby discovers a group of siblings who live alone in the woods. The children take her in, and while they offer the closest Ruby’s ever had to a family, Ruby begins to suspect that they might need her even more than she needs them. And it’s not always clear what’s real and what’s not—or who’s trying to help her and who might be a threat. Told from shifting timelines, and the alternating perspectives of teenage Ruby; her mother, Anna; and even the Shadow Boy, The Doll Funeral is a dazzling follow-up to Kate Hamer’s breakout debut, The Girl in the Red Coat, and a gripping, exquisitely mysterious novel about the connections that remain after a family has been broken apart.




Nine Years Under


Book Description

A dazzling and darkly comic memoir about coming of age in a black funeral home in Baltimore Sheri Booker was only fifteen when she started working at Wylie Funeral Home in West Baltimore. She had no idea her summer job would become nine years of immersion into a hidden world. Reeling from the death of her beloved great aunt, Sheri found comfort in the funeral home and soon had the run of the place. With AIDS and gang violence threatening to wipe out a generation of black men, Wylie was never short on business. As families came together to bury one of their own, Booker was privy to their most intimate moments of grief and despair. But along with the sadness, Booker encountered moments of dark humor: brawls between mistresses and widows, and car crashes at McDonald’s with dead bodies in tow. While she never got over her terror of the embalming room, Booker learned to expect the unexpected and to never, ever cry. Nine Years Under offers readers an unbelievable glimpse into an industry in the backdrop of all our lives.




Each Little Bird that Sings


Book Description

Comfort Snowberger is well acquainted with death since her family runs the funeral parlor in their small southern town, but even so the ten-year-old is unprepared for the series of heart-wrenching events that begins on the first day of Easter vacation with the sudden death of her beloved great-uncle Edisto.




Cemetery Girl


Book Description

A missing child is every parent's nightmare. What comes next is even worse in this riveting thriller from the bestselling and award-winning author of Bring Her Home. Tom and Abby Stuart had everything: a perfect marriage, successful careers, and a beautiful twelve-year-old daughter, Caitlin. Then one day Caitlin vanished without a trace. For a while they grasped at every false hope and followed every empty lead, but the tragedy ended up changing their lives, overwhelming them with guilt and dread, and shattering their marriage. Four years later, Caitlin is found alive but won't discuss where she was or what happened. And when the police arrest a suspect connected to her disappearance, she refuses to testify. Taking matters into his own hands, Tom tries to uncover the truth—and finds that nothing that has happened yet can prepare him for what he is about to discover.




From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death


Book Description

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.




God’s Girl


Book Description

In this beautifully written memoir, Tracy ONeal Daniel Lee takes readers on a candid and emotional journey through her life as a child of divorce, a preachers kid, a young bride, and a mother of a special needs infant son. After her sons shocking death, Tracy, who was later blessed with six daughters, sadly endured more trials, one being her diagnosis of the deadly autoimmune disease sarcoidosis. Later, while assuming shed finally be allowed to live the happily-ever-after life shed always dreamed of, another awful trial emerged causing her to angrily walk away from the God shed loved and served since childhood. After eventually finding her way back to Him, God blessed His prodigal daughter dramatically, proving to her that she was still His girl. As Tracys brother, I have had a front row seat for most of her major life events. Now, through this memoir, she is opening her life up to the world, exposing the good, the bad and the ugly. Throughout this book, readers get an opportunity to experience her roller coaster ride and understand how it is possible to hold on through the bad and enjoy and celebrate all the good in life. Tracy helps us to see that it is really true that all things work together for good to them that love God. William B. ONeal, Sr. Pastor, Author, Motivational Speaker, & Trainer Fairburn, GA




I Felt a Funeral, In My Brain


Book Description

From the author of the poignant and provocative debut Anything Could Happen comes an astonishing novel in verse about love, death, and the poetry we find when we most need it. How do you deal with a hole in your life?Do you turn to poets and pop songs?Do you dream? Do you try on love just to see how it fits? Do you grieve? If you're Avery, you do all of these things. And you write it all down in an attempt to understand what's happened--and is happening--to you. I Felt a Funeral, In My Brain is an astonishing novel about navigating death and navigating life, at a time when the only map you have is the one you can draw for yourself.




Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral


Book Description

Annie Freeman, left one final request, a traveling funeral, and she wants the most important women in her life as pallbearers. From Sonoma to Manhattan, Katherine, Laura, Rebecca, Jill, and Marie will carry Annie's ashes to the special places in her life. At every stop there's a surprise encounter and a small miracle waiting, and as they whoop it up across the country, attracting interest wherever they go, they share their deepest secrets--tales of broken hearts and second chances, missed opportunities and new beginnings. And as they grieve over what they've lost, they discover how much is still possible if only they can unravel the secret Annie left them.




The Girl I Used to Be


Book Description

"Olivia's parents were killed fourteen years ago. Now, new evidence reopens the case . . . and she finds herself involved"--