Winner of the 2004 Middle Grade Fiction Award from the Association for Mormon Letters. It’s bad enough that Kevin’s mother is about to graduate from mortuary college, but when his parents tell him they’re moving to a small town in the Arkansas delta to run the Paramount Funeral Home, Kevin is certain it’s his life that’s over. After all, normal people don’t live in houses with dead bodies downstairs! Once in Armadillo, Arkansas, Kevin tries to adapt to the family business. When he’s targeted by the biggest bully in the seventh grade, Kevin begins to “hear” advice from an unlikely source—Cletus McCulley, an old Mormon fisherman and one of his mother’s dead customers. Cletus’s messages from beyond the grave lead Kevin to uncover not only the bully’s secrets, but the truth about a family tragedy that shattered his parents’ faith and led them away from God. It’s up to Kevin to find the courage to face the bully, and to find a way to help his family heal.

When Florence Steffy's husband died in 1937 she was left with four children, almost no professional skills, and no license to continue the family's funeral business. In an era when people believed that a woman's place was in the home, she decided to go to embalming school and carry on the work her husband had begun. Doris Steffy lovingly chronicles her mother's journey from homemaker to funeral director in this moving memoir. "It is my wish that this book will give renewed hope to those who have lost a loved one, a better understanding to those who have not suffered such a loss, and a new dimension of courage to those who have allowed fear to keep them from realizing their greatest potential," writes Doris. "But most of all, by setting my mother's tenets down on paper, I hope they will come to share her great faith in the resiliency of the human spirit."

“Wise, vulnerable, and surprisingly relatable . . . funny in all the right places and enormously helpful throughout. It will change how you think about death.” —Rachel Held Evans, New York Times–bestselling author of Searching for Sunday We are a people who deeply fear death. While humans are biologically wired to evade death for as long as possible, we have become too adept at hiding from it, vilifying it, and—when it can be avoided no longer—letting the professionals take over. Sixth-generation funeral director Caleb Wilde understands this reticence and fear. He had planned to get as far away from the family business as possible. He wanted to make a difference in the world, and how could he do that if all the people he worked with were . . . dead? Slowly, he discovered that caring for the deceased and their loved ones was making a difference—in other people’s lives to be sure, but it also seemed to be saving his own. A spirituality of death began to emerge as he observed the family who lovingly dressed their deceased father for his burial; the nursing home that honored a woman’s life by standing in procession as her body was taken away; the funeral that united a conflicted community. Through stories like these, told with equal parts humor and poignancy, Wilde’s candid memoir offers an intimate look into the business of death and a new perspective on living and dying. “Open[s] up conversations about life’s ultimate concerns.” —The Washington Post “As a look behind the closed doors of the death industry, as well as a candid exploration of Wilde’s own faith journey, this book is fascinating and compelling.” —National Catholic Reporter “[A] stunner of a debut.” —Rachel Held Evans, author of Inspired

"Morbid and illuminating" (Entertainment Weekly)—a young mortician goes behind the scenes of her curious profession. Armed with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre, Caitlin Doughty took a job at a crematory and turned morbid curiosity into her life’s work. She cared for bodies of every color, shape, and affliction, and became an intrepid explorer in the world of the dead. In this best-selling memoir, brimming with gallows humor and vivid characters, she marvels at the gruesome history of undertaking and relates her unique coming-of-age story with bold curiosity and mordant wit. By turns hilarious, dark, and uplifting, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes reveals how the fear of dying warps our society and "will make you reconsider how our culture treats the dead" (San Francisco Chronicle).

Kevin’s senior year of high school isn’t going as he’d planned. So much has changed, and choices he once thought would be easy to make have become increasingly difficult. His best friend has moved away, his girlfriend has dumped him for the school football hero, and life after graduation looms ahead like a chasm without a bridge. Kevin’s got a hot scholarship offer in his hands, but even though it’s hard for him to talk about his Mormon faith with others, he can’t shake the feeling in his heart that he should serve a two-year mission. When the time comes for Kevin to make the most important decision of his life, one that no one else can or should make for him, he must take a leap of faith and learn to trust his own feelings. Will his decision be the right one, even when tragedy strikes? Find out where Kevin’s choices take him in The Final Farewell, the final volume in the Kevin Kirk Chronicles.

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.

On the night of her twenty-second birthday, Aria Jasper discovers the family secret: she comes from a long line of people who communicate with ghosts. Now that she’s beginning to see and hear the newly dead, she’s expected to pledge her service to her father’s company, AfterCorps, and help rookie ghosts get their earthly affairs in order so they can make their final transfer. Angry about having to give up a music career that’s on the verge of exploding, Aria reluctantly begins her training. The only other student, Sloane, is a sexy AfterCorps devotee determined to join the most dangerous branch of the organization: the Criminally Demonic Unit. As Aria and Sloane grow closer, they begin to suspect all is not as it seems. A terrified ghost claims that Aria’s father is evil and keeping her earthbound against her will. She begs for their help to cross over, but Aria and Sloane may not be prepared for the consequences of defying an organization powerful enough to exert influence in both the land of the living and the dead.

A renowned judge wonders: What would criminal justice look like if we put respect at the center? The Black and Latina daughter of a working-class family, Victoria Pratt learned to treat everyone with dignity, no matter their background. When she became Newark Municipal Court’s chief judge, she knew well the inequities that poor, mentally ill, Black, and brown people faced in the criminal justice system. Pratt’s reforms transformed her courtroom into a place for problem-solving and a resource for healing. She assigned essays to defendants so that the court could understand their hardships and kept people out of jail through alternative sentencing and nonprofit partnerships. She became the judge of second chances, because she knew too few get a first one. With a foreword from Senator Cory Booker, The Power of Dignity shows how we can transform courtrooms, neighborhoods, and our nation to support the vulnerable and heal community rifts. That’s the power of dignity.

At nine years old, Monica Holloway develops a fascination with the local funeral home. Small wonder, with a father who drives his Ford pick up with a Kodak movie camera sitting shotgun just in case he sees an accident, and whose home movies feature more footage of disasters than of his children. In between her father's bouts of violence and abuse, Monica becomes fast friends with Julie Kilner, whose father is the town mortician. She and Julie preferred the casket showroom to the parks and grassy backyards in her hometown of Elk Grove, Ohio, where they would take turns lying in their favourite coffins. In time, Monica and Julie get a job driving the company hearse to pick up bodies from the airport, yet even Monica's growing independence can't protect her from her parents' irresponsibility, and from the feeling that she simply does not deserve to be safe. Little does she know, as she finally strikes out on her own, that her parents' biggest betrayal has yet to be revealed...

Four womena potter, a caterer, a councillor and a teacherall have a connection with Nottingham. They tell of their Jamaican childhood and their lives resettling as early immigrants in England. The journeys, full of pathos and often laced with humour, provide insight into their inner strength, values, and triumph over adversity. Here, history becomes Her-story.