She surveyed the darkest corners of Internet chat rooms, and made a pilgrimage to London to savor the most caustic and literate obits of all. Now she leads us on a compelling journey into the cult and culture behind the obituary page and the unusual lives we don't quite appreciate until they're gone.

    . . and an unusual occupation. When she impulsively applies to be a mortuary technician and is offered the position, she has no idea that her decision to accept will be one of the most momentous of her life. “What I didn’t realize then,” she writes, “was that I was about to start one of the most amazing jobs you can do.”To Williams, life in the mortuary is neither grim nor frightening. She introduces readers to a host of unique characters: pathologists (many eccentric, some utterly crazy), undertakers, and the man from the coroner’s office who sings to her every morning. No two days are alike, and while Williams’s sensitivity to the dead never wavers, her tales from the crypt range from mischievous to downright shocking. Readers won’t forget the fitness fanatic run over while doing nighttime push-ups on the road, the man so large he had to be carted in via refrigerated truck, or the guide dog who led his owner onto railway tracks—and left him there. The indomitable Williams never bats an eye, even as she is confronted—daily—with situations that would leave the rest of us speechless.

    But once the wake is over, at least he's fortunate enough to have a large extended family welcoming him with open arms, offering him care and comfort...and another chance at childhood. From a Ferris-wheel ride with a nun to a bus trip with a live chicken, In the Castle of the Flynns is a novel both mournful and merry-an unforgettable portrait of a boy growing up in1950s Chicago.

    These unabridged essays by Carl Sagan were originally published in either popular science magazines or academic journals. This is the first time his essays have become available on audio.

    Now Wilkinson starts with the dramatic premise that everyone at all times is in need of a miracle, and that God is ready to meet those needs supernaturally through ordinary people who are willing to learn the protocol of heaven.

    I know. No one says it but I know…” —from Signs of Life Twenty-four-year-old Natalie Taylor was leading a charmed life. At the age of twenty four, she had a fulfilling job as a high school English teacher, a wonderful husband, a new house and a baby on the way.  Then, while visiting her sister, she gets the news that Josh has died in a freak accident.  Four months before the birth of her son, Natalie is leveled by loss.   What follows is an incredibly powerful emotional journey, as Natalie calls upon resources she didn’t even know she had in order to re-imagine and re-build a life for her and her son. In vivid and immediate detail, Natalie documents her life from the day of Josh’s death through the birth their son, Kai, as she struggles in her role as a new mother where everyone is watching her for signs of impending collapse.  With honesty, raw pain, and most surprising, a wicked sense of humor, Natalie recounts the agonies and unexpected joys of her new life.  There is the frustration of holidays, navigating the relationship with her in-laws, the comfort she finds and unlikely friendship she forges in support groups and the utterly breathtaking, but often overwhelming new motherhood.   When she returns to the classroom, she finds that little is more healing than the honesty and egocentricity of teenagers.   Drawing on lessons from beloved books like The Color Purple and The Catcher in the Rye and the talk shows she suddenly can’t get enough of, from the strength of her family and friends, and from a rich fantasy life—including a saucy fairy godmother who guides her grieving—Natalie embarks on the ultimate journey of self-discovery and realizes you can sometimes find the best in yourself during the worst life has to offer.  And she delivers these lessons, in way that feels like she’s right beside you in her bathrobe and with a glass of wine--the cool, funny girlfriend you love to stay up all night with.   Unforgettable and utterly absorbing, Signs of Life features a powerful, wholly original debut voice that will have you crying and laughing to the very last page.

    As Professor of Anatomy and Forensic Anthropology, she focuses on mortal remains in her lab, at burial sites, at scenes of violence, murder and criminal dismemberment, and when investigating mass fatalities due to war, accident or natural disaster. In All that Remains she reveals the many faces of death she has come to know, using key cases to explore how forensic science has developed, and what her work has taught her. Do we expect a book about death to be sad? Macabre? Sue’s book is neither. There is tragedy, but there is also humour in stories as gripping as the best crime novel. Our own death will remain a great unknown. But as an expert witness from the final frontier, Sue Black is the wisest, most reassuring, most compelling of guides.

    There he awaits execution by lethal injection.If he survives that long.In prison, Sam fights for his life while his attorney works frantically on his appeal. It is then that he embraces the faith of his departed wife and begins to manifest supernatural abilities. Abilities which help him save lives– his own, those of his unlikely allies–and uncover the true killer’s identity, unlocking the door to his exoneration.Now a free man, Sam’s newfound faith confronts him with the most insurmountable challenge yet. A challenge beyond vengeance, beyond rage, beyond anything Sam believes himself capable of: to forgive the very man who murdered his family, according to his faith. But this endeavor reveals darker secrets than either Sam or the killer could ever have imagined. Secrets that hurtle them into a fateful collision course.BEYOND JUSTICE, a tale of loss, redemption, and the power of faith.

    The trilobites, which dominated the ocean floors for 300 million years, are gone. The last of the dinosaurs was wiped out by a Mount Everest-sized meteorite that slammed into the earth 65 million years ago. The great flying reptiles are gone, and so are the marine reptiles, some of them larger than a humpback whale. Before humans crossed the Bering land bridge some 15,000 years ago, North America was populated by mastodons, mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, and cave bears. They too are MIA. Passenger pigeons once flew over North America in flocks that numbered in the billions; the last one died in 1914.In this book you will meet creatures that were driven to extinction even more recently, as well as some that were brought back from the brink. You will even encounter animals not known to exist until recently -- an antidote to extinction.

    But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering.Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.

    It includes discussions of topics that have become vital to a modern treatment of GFT, such as critical phenomena, lattice gauge theory, supersymmetry, quantum gravity, supergravity, and superstrings.

    We all die, and for most of us, a cemetery is our final resting place. But how many people really know what goes on inside, around, and beyond them?Enter the world of the dead as Katherine Ramsland talks to mortuary assistants, gravediggers, funeral home owners, and more, and find out about:Stitching and cosmetic secrets used on mutilated bodiesEmbalmers who do more than just embalmThe rising popularity of cremation artGhosts that infest graveyards everywhereIf you've ever scoffed at the high price of burying the dead, or ever wondered how your loved ones are handled when they die, or simply stared at tombstones with morbid fascination, then take a trip with Katherine Ramsland and learn about the booming industry -- and strange tales -- that surround cemeteries everywhere.

    The odds they would both survive the crash were minimal--a testimony to the miracles that began that night and continued through months of surgeries and hospitalizations. The Stadlers struggled to rebuild their lives, only to face more heartache and loss. But through the hard times, their faith grew as God continued to save them from despair and bring blessings into their lives.For everyone seeking a deeper faith or affirmation of their belief in a good God, this book will provide hope and the reassurance that God still ministers through his angels today.

    Once a happily married, successful veterinarian, he now lives with his sister and thrives as the small-town crazy of Half Moon Hollow. But when a fifteen-year-old orphan claims she's his daughter, Will is forced back into the role he fears most: fatherhood. Her biological dad isn't the hero Regan Whitmer hoped for, but he's better than her abusive stepfather back in Chicago. Still haunted by her mother's suicide and the rebellious past she fears led to it, Regan is desperate for a stable home and a normal family--things Will can't offer. Can she ride the highs and lows of his illness to find a new definition of family? The Rules of Half explores what it is to be an atypical family in a small town and to be mentally ill in the wake of a tragedy--and who has the right to determine both.

    But there is another question Good Life, Good Death asks us to contemplate: how does the idea of life after death affect how we live our lives? Gelek Rimpoche tells stories of the mystical Tibet he lived in, as well as the contemporary America he is now a citizen of, and shares the wisdom of the great masters. He asks us to open our minds and see if we can entertain a bigger picture of life after life, even for a moment. He makes the connection between powerful emotions such as anger, obsession, jealousy and pride, and our past as well as our future.