Finch chronicles the harrowing true story of two friends who plunge 900 feet into the water in South Africa--and only one returns. What happened that day is the stuff of nightmarish drama, but it's also a compelling human story of friendship and of coming to terms with loss and tragedy. 8-page color photo insert.

A true story of death and survival in the world’s most dangerous sport, cave diving. Two friends plunge 900 ft deep into a water-filled crater in the Kalahari Desert to raise the body of a diver who had perished there a decade before. Only one returns. Unquenchable heroism and complex human relationships amid the perils of extreme sport.

Finch chronicles the harrowing true story of two friends who plunge 900 feet into the water in South Africa--and only one returns. What happened that day is the stuff of nightmarish drama, but it's also a compelling human story of friendship and of coming to terms with loss and tragedy. 8-page color photo insert.

From Kevin Brockmeier, one of this generation's most inventive young writers, comes a striking new novel about death, life, and the mysterious place in between. The City is inhabited by those who have departed Earth but are still remembered by the living. They will reside in this afterlife until they are completely forgotten. But the City is shrinking, and the residents clearing out. Some of the holdouts, like Luka Sims, who produces the City’s only newspaper, are wondering what exactly is going on. Others, like Coleman Kinzler, believe it is the beginning of the end. Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is trapped in an Antarctic research station, her supplies are running low, her radio finds only static, and the power is failing. With little choice, Laura sets out across the ice to look for help, but time is running out. Kevin Brockmeier alternates these two storylines to create a lyrical and haunting story about love, loss and the power of memory.

This book and its predecessor, Dead Man Watching, WestBow Press, 2017, is all about people of Christian faith who have actually or almost died with all the medical indicators. This description can be used in the historical sense, as with Abraham Lincoln or JFK. While there may or may not have been actual medical certificates of death, these stories are nonetheless about people who were actually dead or nearly dead and came to life again or survived near death. The mystery of how this happens in each case is attributed to faith and calling upon the mercy of God in the name of Jesus Christ. The many responses to Dr. John Haart’s first book, Dead Man Watching, WestBow Press, 2017, became the motivation for this sequel publication. The author’s eagerness to tell his story and witness to the mercy of God in life and death has been met with similar responses on a multiple of occasions, “I also have a story to tell you,” or some variation thereof. Those accounts have been recreated as word pictures and some illustrations to provide the reader with the more incredible accounts of revival or survival from death or near death by the mercy of God. The key element of these accounts is prayer and faith as opposed to evening news oddities titled: “Can you believe this actually happened?” This entire story is about the mercy of God from beginning to multiple ends; it is a modern testimony of how God works in mysterious ways through and over many stages of life. The amazing revelation for all those who read these stories is that these are real people who died or almost died, and they are now talking to you about the miraculous interventions of God in death and life again. In a very real way this book is an auto-obituary of those who witnessed their own deaths or near deaths and now live to tell their stories.

DIVThrough a series of literary and cultural readings, argues that African-Americans have a special relation to death arising from their death-like social marginality./div

From New York Times bestselling author and blogger Heather B. Armstrong comes an honest and irreverent memoir—reminiscent of the New York Times bestseller Brain on Fire—about her experience as the third person ever to participate in an experimental treatment for depression involving ten rounds of a chemically induced coma approximating brain death. For years, Heather B. Armstrong has alluded to her struggle with depression on her website, dooce. It’s scattered throughout her archive, where it weaves its way through posts about pop culture, music, and motherhood. In 2016, Heather found herself in the depths of a depression she just couldn’t shake, an episode darker and longer than anything she had previously experienced. She had never felt so discouraged by the thought of waking up in the morning, and it threatened to destroy her life. For the sake of herself and her family, Heather decided to risk it all by participating in an experimental clinical trial. Now, for the first time, Heather recalls the torturous eighteen months of suicidal depression she endured and the month-long experimental study in which doctors used propofol anesthesia to quiet all brain activity for a full fifteen minutes before bringing her back from a flatline. Ten times. The experience wasn’t easy. Not for Heather or her family. But a switch was flipped, and Heather hasn’t experienced a single moment of suicidal depression since. “Breathtakingly honest” (Lisa Genova, New York Times bestselling author), self-deprecating, and scientifically fascinating, The Valedictorian of Being Dead brings to light a groundbreaking new treatment for depression. The Valedictorian of Being Dead was previously published with the subtitle “The True Story of Dying Ten Times to Live.”