The inescapable reality of death has given rise to much of literature's most profound and moving work. D. J. Enright's wonderfully eclectic selection presents the words of poet and novelist, scientist and philosopher, mystic and sceptic. And alongside these 'professional' writers, he allows the voices of ordinary people to be heard; for this is a subject on which there are no real experts and wisdom lies in many unexpected places.

"Dr Janet Leighton is dead and Frank Williams of the Oxford police wants to know why. Who knows the answer: is it Chris, her son, Simon, her husband, or Dr Collins, who works with Leighton?" - back cover.

This Handbook consists of 21 new essays on the nature and value of death, the relevance of the metaphysics of time and personal identity for questions about death, the desirability of immortality, and the wrongness of killing.

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial reviews the current state of mortuary archaeology and its practice, highlighting its often contentious place in the modern socio-politics of archaeology. It contains forty-four chapters which focus on the history of the discipline and its current scientific techniques and methods. Written by leading, international scholars in the field, it derives its examples and case studies from a wide range of time periods, such as the middle palaeolithic to the twentieth century, and geographical areas which include Europe, North and South America, Africa, and Asia. Combining up-to-date knowledge of relevant archaeological research with critical assessments of the theme and an evaluation of future research trajectories, it draws attention to the social, symbolic, and theoretical aspects of interpreting mortuary archaeology. The volume is well-illustrated with maps, plans, photographs, and illustrations and is ideally suited for students and researchers.

Written in response to the Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster of 1931 in Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, The Book of the Dead is an important part of West Virginia's cultural heritage and a powerful account of one of the worst industrial catastrophes in American history. The poems collected here investigate the roots of a tragedy that killed hundreds of workers, most of them African American. They are a rare engagement with the overlap between race and environment in Appalachia. Published for the first time alongside photographs by Nancy Naumburg, who accompanied Rukeyser to Gauley Bridge in 1936, this edition of The Book of the Dead includes an introduction by Catherine Venable Moore, whose writing on the topic has been anthologized in Best American Essays.

Francis Wheatley Winn, Senior Tutor at St Thomas' s College, is ready for a cosy night of dining, port, and pleasant company. Ernst Brendel, Viennese lawyer and crime specialist, has come to Oxford to lecture in Law, and the regular residents of St Thomas's are pleased to have such an interesting guest to liven up their after dinner chat. Talk soon turns to murder, and Winn finds the subject altogether unpalatable, even if his colleagues seem to relish the details of past cases Brendel has worked on. But then real Murder breaks the cosy calm of the evening, shocking the inhabitants out of their frivolous talk. Now Winn must overcome his distaste to work with Brendel in uncovering the perpetrator of this terrible crime. First published in 1933, An Oxford Tragedy is a classic murder mystery, with Brendel at its centre as a master of hypothesis and deduction.