Meet the Williams family. Grandma Williams has died, and her children call Night & Day Funeral Home to make arrangements. Courtesy of a Twilight-Zonesque space-time anomaly, the Williams family ends up concurrently planning and holding two funerals for Grandma—one arranged by funeral director Sam Standard and the other by funeral director Garrett Gatekeeper. How will the two funerals turn out? Will the Williams family even be able to tell the difference? Find out in this riveting—and revealing—Tale of Two Funerals...

APHRA BEHN is an unusual woman by any standard, especially those of 1676 London. A popular playwright and former spy, she does not bow to convention, does not always have the fortitude to turn a charming, but alcoholic attorney from her bed, and currently, does not have the funds to pay the rent on her London home. But a long-shot bet--that the Earl of Rochester's doltish young mistress can improve her painfully poor acting enough to play the lead in Aphra's latest play--could have her in the clear again. Until she's indebted to pay for the funerals of two brothers whose kindness helped her years ago. And the debt goes further than that--both deaths smack of murder, and Aphra is determined to find a killer and uncover a deadly secret...one that could engage all of England in a bloody civil war. From the squalid streets of London to the grand chambers of Whitehall Palace, author Molly Brown vividly recreates Restoration England at its most uproarious, while crafting a brilliant novel of history, humor, and heart-pounding intrigue.

His friend was killed. Who's next? Tom O'Banion loves his hometown of Muskegon, Michigan. He has his dream job as the choral director at Muskegon High School. He has a beautiful teacher friend, Maria, that he's hoping he'll marry. One of his best friends, Fred, is the mayor and they are in sync about how to make Muskegon even better than it is. Dark forces threaten to shake Tom's good life. The "Group of Nine" don't like the mayor's plans - they want to keep running the town the way they always have, and they're willing to kill to keep the mayor in line. To find the killer, Tom puts his own and Maria's life in danger. He just can't let them get away with it. He joins forces with the police to help make certain the city and its good people survive this threat and justice is served.

Creating Meaning in Funerals is a book about the ways in which bereaved families and communities create meaningful ceremonies against a backdrop of what is culturally appropriate, even when their choices might make little economic sense to those outside the culture. The culmination of these customs and practices, this book maintains, is how bereaved individuals, families, and communities are drawn into significant meaning making in early bereavement. Readers will be repeatedly challenged to suspend their own biases, observe the customs and beliefs of others thoughtfully, and provide counseling support and encouragement to bereaved individuals for whom funerals were or were not effective means of coping with their loss. Discussion questions at the end of each chapter make the book useful for educational settings such as funeral service classroom instruction, thanatology classes, and grief counseling courses. Each chapter is also accompanied by its own reference list to make chapters more useful individually.

Have you ever had to make a speech? Did you struggle to decide what to speak about? Well, help is here! Reflections: Speeches from the Heart is a collected work of speeches and how tos that teaches you how to write and present a speech, and gives practical examples of how you can mine experiences in your own life to personalize your speeches and connect with your audience. The collection, drawn from a long and well-lived life, is a boon to professional as well as amateur speakers. The selected speeches include reflections on life, local and world events, and theological subjects. In these pages you will learn to craft and deliver strong speeches so that when you are called on to speak to audiences large or small, you can rise to the occasion feeling confident and inspired.