Pleasing the Dead


Book Description

Some nasty predators dwell in paradise, and they aren't all hiding in the azure waters. The day attorney Storm Kayama arrives in Kahului to help Lara Farrell set up her new dive shop, someone bombs a restaurant. When one of Lara's employees, a recent Japanese immigrant, kills himself and one of his young daughters, Storm begins to ask questions. The tentacle of the Yakuza, the dangerous Japanese branch of organized crime, ensnare local businesses, real estate, and politics. Cunning and deadly, the clan leaders exploit underage women and eliminate anyone who dares face up to them. Storm finds herself up against a lethal and faceless enemy, in a place where disposing of a victim is easy as dumping her in shark-infested waters. But who is hunting whom? Storm is caught in a struggle to the death, and begins to realize that surviving doesn't always mean living. For some, the ghosts of the past may be more painful than the anguish of the present.




You Are Dead. (Sign Here Please)


Book Description

You Are Dead. (Sign Here Please) is a madcap comedy of truly ludicrous proportions. After Nathan Haynes dies, he discovers that the afterlife is run by straight-laced bureaucrats, but when he refuses to sign his 21B he is punted back to life in his insane home city of Dead Donkey. He can't rest easy, though - the bureaucrats are out to get him and they will put his papers in order, no matter the cost. Will our hero die (again)? Will the bureaucrats trick him into filling the proper forms in? Will Nathan ever get to do his laundry? Find out in You Are Dead. (Sign Here Please)!




On Care to Be Had for the Dead


Book Description

The book, On care to be had for the dead, I wrote, having been asked by letter whether it profits any person after death that his body shall be buried at the memorial of any Saint. The book begins thus: Long time unto your Holiness, my venerable fellow bishop Paulinus.




The Book of Dead Philosophers


Book Description

Diogenes died by holding his breath. Plato allegedly died of a lice infestation. Diderot choked to death on an apricot. Nietzsche made a long, soft-brained and dribbling descent into oblivion after kissing a horse in Turin. From the self-mocking haikus of Zen masters on their deathbeds to the last words (gasps) of modern-day sages, The Book of Dead Philosophers chronicles the deaths of almost 200 philosophers-tales of weirdness, madness, suicide, murder, pathos and bad luck. In this elegant and amusing book, Simon Critchley argues that the question of what constitutes a 'good death' has been the central preoccupation of philosophy since ancient times. As he brilliantly demonstrates, looking at what the great thinkers have said about death inspires a life-affirming enquiry into the meaning and possibility of human happiness. In learning how to die, we learn how to live.







My Dead Book


Book Description

A rumination on survival, queer aging, and estrangement that was a finalist for the Republic of Consciousness Prize. My dead friends are back. I lie in bed at night and see them. Haunted by insomnia and the past as he approaches his fiftieth birthday, the narrator of My Dead Book flips through scenes of his youth and memories of dozens of friends who are no longer with him. Living alone and working odd jobs in Wisconsin, he ruminates on survival, queer aging, his years as a teenage throwaway, and estrangement, wondering whether he has outlived his place in the world. First published in 2021, Lippens’s debut novel was hailed as “a brutally acerbic novel of queer pessimism” (Donna Marcus, AnOther Magazine). As Lindsay Lerman observed in Southwest Review, “My Dead Book is not transgressive because it follows a gay man as he struggles to survive on the fringes of multiple worlds. … It is continually transgressing. It’s a living book (a living dead book), moving around in time, making tangential connections.” This new edition includes an introduction by LAMBDA Literary Award-winning American poet and writer, Eileen Myles.




The Modern Book of the Dead


Book Description

A modern, all-encompassing exploration of what happens after death combines spirituality with philosophy, history, and science, all of which guide readers toward the timeless truth that human consciousness lives on after death.




A Mass for the Dead


Book Description

This is written in remembrance of Gibson's deceased parents and in honor of their lives. In reflecting on them he in turn makes it a tribute to parenthood and a dedication to his own children. Gibson's language is striking in its poignancy. Despite the title, this is not a religious work, but a work of love from a child to parent and from the child-become-parent to his own children. Interspersed between the reminiscences of his parents and his childhood, Gibson inserts achingly beautiful epistles to his children for their guidance about life and parenting.--Adapted from barnesandnoble.com.




How To Read The Egyptian Book Of The Dead


Book Description

The Egyptians created a world of supernatural forces so vivid, powerful and inescapable that controlling one's destiny within it was a constant preoccupation. In life, supernatural forces manifested themselves through misfortune and illness,and after death were faced for eternity in the Otherworld, along with the divine gods who controlled the universe. The Book of the Dead empowered the reader to overcome the dangers lurking in the Otherworld and to become one with the gods who governed. Barry Kemp selects a number of spells to explore who and what the Egyptians feared and the kind of assistance that the Book offered them, revealing a relationship between the human individual and the divine quite unlike that found in the major faiths of the modern world.




The Victorian Book of the Dead


Book Description

Macabre tales of death and mourning in Victorian America.