A drug-foggy, record-flipping novel about mental illness, mid-life loss, music, suburban loneliness, and weird-ass friendship.

Life and Death . . . Two words with such opposite meaning and which inflict such contradictory emotions and yet are so closely intertwined in our lives. As parents, we bring meaning and life into this world through our children. Our lives become defined as a result. We learn the joy, hardship, and responsibility of shaping an innocent life. But a day will come when that life will be taken. For some, death will come too soon. Thus is the story of my son, Brian Nicholas Hoeflinger, who died unexpectedly at age 18. Brian was drinking alcohol the night he died and drove drunk. His car struck a tree and his life was ended. Nothing about Brian's life suggested that he would meet this kind of untimely end. He was a gifted student and accomplished athlete. He was always generous with his time and words of encouragement to anyone who needed help. He was a good boy who made a mistake, and that one mistake cost him his life. That is the harsh reality of teenage drinking. I'll never forget the image of my son lying there dead on a cold gurney in Trauma room 24 at Toledo Hospital, a room that I have been in so many times before as a neurosurgeon but never as a father. His lifeless body lay there almost as though he were asleep, and I wished he were only asleep but I knew he was dead and would never come back home with us. It was the worst singular feeling that I have ever experienced in my life. The second worst experience in my life was telling my 3 other children later that night that their older brother Brian was dead. It was heart breaking to watch Kevin, Julie, and Christie say goodbye to their big brother forever that night. Nothing can ever prepare you for such an event. And yet from this tragedy has come guidance and hope for others not to make the same mistake. This book will take you on a personal journey through the life and death of my son. You will see through my eyes the pain and agony of losing a child, but you will also experience the love, inspiration, and hope that has resulted. By reading this book, you will learn how more lives will be touched and saved through the life and death of my son than I could ever accomplish as a neurosurgeon. This is a book that every parent and every teenager should read.

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In this collection of accounts, people share their experiences of losing loved ones through death from natural causes, genetic conditions, accident, suicide and murder. Looking at death from different perspectives, it encourages people to understand their own grief and how those around to them might be affected by what can seem a very private loss.

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In the not-too-distant future, humans find sanctuary in small communities like Refuge. But not everything is as it seems. Rumors of Zombie Shepherds hint at a questionable fate for the living, and the zombie masters rule from their glass tower. Before the apocalypse, Jude was a rising indie singer and songwriter taking the world by storm. Now he's just trying to survive in a world where other humans are sometimes more dangerous than the monsters. Jude has lived in anonymity for five years until his biggest fan recognizes him... ...and she just happens to be a zombie. Now Jude is plunged into a world where both the hungry dead and the ambitious living are out to kill him. Zombie Girl is proving to be an unlikely ally, but can he trust her enough to survive? Or will she be the death of him?

Two men born with different backgrounds who were destined to collide in Dallas, Texas. One man came from a family of great wealth and power, while the other man came from a family who struggled for everything they ever had. One stood for peace while the other man stood for confusion and deceit. President John F. Kennedy had a dangerous goal in mind: end the Cold War in his lifetime. Lee Harvey Oswald was a pawn used by his employers, the Central Intelligence Agency, to stop President Kennedy from reaching his goal. This is a fictional re-telling of the events which led up President Kennedy's Assassination. It tells how President Kennedy fought to spread his message of world peace, and how the CIA stopped him at every turn.

An unforgettable tale of a village that descends into a sleepwalking spell as the sun threatens to never rise again, by the author of Discovering Fiction. Yan Lianke has secured his place as contemporary China’s most essential and daring novelist, “with his superlative gifts for storytelling and penetrating eye for truth” (New York Times Book Review). His newest novel, The Day the Sun Died—winner of the Dream of the Red Chamber Award, one of the most prestigious honors for Chinese-language novels—is a haunting story of a town caught in a waking nightmare. In a little village nestled in the Balou mountains, fourteen-year-old Li Niannian and his parents run a funeral parlor. One evening, he notices a strange occurrence. Instead of preparing for bed, more and more neighbors appear in the streets and fields, carrying on with their daily business as if the sun hadn’t already set. Li Niannian watches, mystified. As hundreds of residents are found dreamwalking, they act out the desires they’ve suppressed during waking hours. Before long, the community devolves into chaos, and it’s up to Li Niannian and his parents to save the town before sunrise. Set over the course of one increasingly bizarre night, The Day the Sun Died is a propulsive, darkly sinister tale from a world-class writer. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Named Best Book of the Year at Publishers Weekly Named Best Fiction in Translation Selection by Kirkus Reviews An Amazon Best Book of the Month “[The Day the Sun Died is] the creepiest book I’ve read in years: a social comedy that bleeds like a zombie apocalypse . . . Yan’s understated wit runs through these pages like a snake through fallen leaves . . . Invokes that fluid dream state in which everything represents something else, something deeper . . . A wake-up call about the path we’re on.” —Ron Charles, Washington Post “Floats between surrealism, sci-fi, horror, and absurdism, while never letting go of its satirical eye. Yet the language and structure of the novel reads more like Samuel Beckett or James Joyce than it does The Handmaid’s Tale.” —Ploughshares