"Best-selling author and licensed mortician Caitlin Doughty answers real questions from kids about death, dead bodies, and decomposition. Every day, funeral director Caitlin Doughty receives dozens of questions about death. What would happen to an astronaut's body if it were pushed out of a space shuttle? Do people poop when they die? Can Grandma have a Viking funeral? In the tradition of Randall Munroe's What If?, Doughty's new book, Will My Cat...

On the gritty streets of L.A., the destinies of four people desperate for connection and redemption are about to collide. An erotic dancer, a grieving husband, a terminally ill ex-con, and a mortician all desperate for redemption collide on Christmas Eve.

After moving to the Appalachian mountains to manage his ailing father's funeral home, ex-cop Barry Clayton finds himself investigating the murder of a stray skeleton discovered when he is hired for the routine job of moving a grave.

Most people want to avoid thinking about death, but Caitlin Doughty-a twenty-something with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre-took a job at a crematory, turning morbid curiosity into her lifes work. Thrown into a profession of gallows humor and vivid characters (both living and very dead), Caitlin learned to navigate the secretive culture of those who care for the deceased. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes tells an unusual coming-of-age...

Describes death customs and rituals from around the world, exploring how they compare to the impersonal American system and how mourners respond best when they participate in caring for the deceased.

"J.J. Graves has seen a lot of dead bodies in her line of work. She's not only in the mortuary business, but she's also the coroner for King George County, Virginia. When a grisly murder is discovered in the small town of Bloody Mary, it's up to J.J. and her best friend, Detective Jack Lawson, to bring the victim justice. The murders are piling up. When a popular mystery writer shows up on J.J.'s doorstep with plans of writing his new book about the...

Mary Crampton has spent all of her thirty years in Petroleum, a small Western town once supported by a powerful grain company. Living at home, she works as the embalmer in her fathers mortuary: an unlikely job that has long marked her as an outsider. Yet, to Mary there is a satisfying art to positioning and styling each body to capture the essence of a subjects life. Though some townsfolk pretend that the community is thriving, the truth is that Petroleum...