The peace and quiet of Porcupine City, a tiny town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, is destroyed by the discovery of a headless corpse, wrapped in plastic and accompanied by clues to another headless corpse.

Porcupine County, a peaceful little place in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, suddenly becomes the unlikely backdrop for a grisly and high-tech treasure hunt when amorous teen-agers stumble upon a headless corpse. When a second cadaver turns up, Deputy Steve Martinez realizes the bodies are someone's twisted idea of a game. Worse, the election for county sheriff is fast approaching. And Steve's relationship with the beautiful Ginny Fitzgerald becomes strained as he searches for a way to connect with her foster son. The case becomes Steve's toughest investigation yet.

The human body represents the perfect element for relating communities of the living with the divine. This is clearly evident in the mythological stories that recount the creation of humans by deities among ancient and contemporaneous societies across a very broad geographical environment. Thus, parts of selected human body parts or skeletal elements can then become an ideal proxy for connecting with the supernatural as demonstrated by the cult of the human skulls among Neolithic communities in the Near East as well as the cult of the relics of Christian saints. The aim of this volume is to undertake a cross-cultural investigation of the role played in antiquity by humans and human remains in creating forms of relationality with the divine. Such an approach will highlight how the human body can be envisioned as part of a broader materialization of religious beliefs that is based on connecting different realms of materiality in perceiving the supernatural by the community of the livings. Case studies on ritual aspects of funerary practices is presented, emphasising the varied roles of body parts in mortuary rituals and as relics. Other papers take a wider look at regional practices in various time periods and cultural contexts to explore the central role of the corpse in the negotiation of death in human culture.

Throughout the centuries, different cultures have established a variety of procedures for handling and disposing of corpses. Often the methods are directly associated with the deceased's position in life, such as a pharaoh's mummification in Egypt or the cremation of a Buddhist. Treatment by the living of the dead over time and across cultures is the focus of this study. Burial arrangements and preparations are detailed, including embalming, the funeral service, storage and transport of the body, and forms of burial. Autopsies and the investigative process of causes of deliberate death are fully covered. Preservation techniques such as cryonic suspension and mummification are discussed, as well as a look at the "recycling" of the corpse through organ donation, donation to medicine, animal scavengers, cannibalism, and, of course, natural decay and decomposition. Mistreatments of a corpse are also covered.

Biblical tales retold as episodes in humanity's battle with the ravenous dead. Now, get five novels in a single volume: Death Has Come up into Our Windows What Our Eyes Have Witnessed Strangers in the Land No Lasting Burial I Will Hold My Death Close (and an exclusive excerpt from By a Slender Thread) DEATH HAS COME UP INTO OUR WINDOWS (Book 1) It is 587 BC. A vast army lies encamped about Yirmiyahu’s city, and a rebellious king has closed the city gates, locking in the living and the dead together. Now, the things Yirmiyahu sees and the things he must do will call into question every promise he has made, every duty he has sworn -- to his wife, his God, and his city. WHAT OUR EYES HAVE WITNESSED (Book 2) Regina endures a death-in-life as a sex slave in the Subura, the ancient world's most terrible ghetto -- until a strange man sees her suffering and gives her a coat, a new name, and a new life. The man is Polycarp, and he has the Gift of gazing into the eyes of the hungry dead and granting them rest -- a Gift that comes at a terrible cost. And ancient Rome may burn him for it. STRANGERS IN THE LAND (Book 3) Four must stand against the dead: The aging prophetess Devora. Hurriya, the slave girl. Zadok, a legend among warriors. And the widower Barak, who has sworn to defend his homeland from a migration of walking corpses greater than has ever been seen. In this retelling of a tale from Judges, the strangers in the land must stand together if they are to rid the land of its blight. NO LASTING BURIAL (Book 4) A man wanders out of the desert one day and finds a village in ruins after a night of the walking dead. The survivors have thrown the snarling corpses into the Sea of Galilee, only to starve as the ghoul-haunted sea yields no fish. Will the stranger's coming bring back the fish, or the hungry dead? I WILL HOLD MY DEATH CLOSE (Book 5) Marked for sacrifice by her own father.... A young woman must rely on only her wits and troubled memories of her mother’s faith to survive. Jepthah's daughter flees to the hills, knowing her father and his stone blade may appear at any time to claim her -- while the unburied dead of her people also hunt her in the low ravines. The centuries to come will not remember her name. But generations of young women will climb those hills to remember her. "Heartbreaking and wonderful." - Conflictium "Stant Litore has been doing fascinating phantasmagorical things with zombies in biblical times." - Jeff Vandermeer, author of Annihilation "I find myself riveted to Stant's prose, not only because I'm eager to find out the characters' fate but because his words are so beautiful. The story has stayed with me days after reading it. I highly recommend." - Denise Grover Swank, author of The Curse Keepers "The Zombie Bible is philosophy played out in bleak landscapes. It's psychology set to the harsh strains of Prokofiev. Litore's prose is lean and hungry; his characters are faceted all-round like various colored stones; his scenes pulse with blood and life, ring with metal or reek of sweat and undeath." - Marc McDermott "Litore’s vibrant writing rips the lid off of the King James version and reveals to us a world of intense human hopes, dreams and pathos. You’ve never seen anything like this before." - Richard Ellis Preston, Jr., author of Romulus Buckle and the City of the Founders "To say I loved this book would be an understatement. I could not put it down." - The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Teasing Secrets from the Dead is a front-lines story of crime scene investigation at some of the most infamous sites in recent history. In this absorbing, surprising, and undeniably compelling book, forensics expert Emily Craig tells her own story of a life spent teasing secrets from the dead. Emily Craig has been a witness to history, helping to seek justice for thousands of murder victims, both famous and unknown. It’s a personal story that you won’t soon forget. Emily first became intrigued by forensics work when, as a respected medical illustrator, she was called in by the local police to create a model of a murder victim’s face. Her fascination with that case led to a dramatic midlife career change: She would go back to school to become a forensic anthropologist—and one of the most respected and best-known “bone hunters” in the nation. As a student working with the FBI in Waco, Emily helped uncover definitive proof that many of the Branch Davidians had been shot to death before the fire, including their leader, David Koresh, whose bullet-pierced skull she reconstructed with her own hands. Upon graduation, Emily landed a prestigious full-time job as forensic anthropologist for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, a state with an alarmingly high murder rate and thousands of square miles of rural backcountry, where bodies are dumped and discovered on a regular basis. But even with her work there, Emily has been regularly called to investigations across the country, including the site of the terrorist attack on the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, where a mysterious body part—a dismembered leg—was found at the scene and did not match any of the known victims. Through careful scientific analysis, Emily was able to help identify the leg’s owner, a pivotal piece of evidence that helped convict Timothy McVeigh. In September 2001, Emily received a phone call summoning her to New York City, where she directed the night-shift triage at the World Trade Center’s body identification site, collaborating with forensics experts from all over the country to collect and identify the remains of September 11 victims. From the biggest news stories of our time to stranger-than-true local mysteries, these are unforgettable stories from the case files of Emily Craig’s remarkable career.