The law of succession rests on a single brute fact: you can't take it with you. The stock of wealth that turns over as people die is staggeringly large. In the United States alone, some $41 trillion will pass from the dead to the living in the first half of the 21st century. But the social impact of inheritance is more than a matter of money; it is also a matter of what money buys and brings about. Law and custom allow people many ways to pass on their property. As Friedman's enlightening social history reveals, a decline in formal rules, the ascendancy of will substitutes over classic wills, social changes like the rise of the family of affection, changing ideas of acceptable heirs, and the potential disappearance of the estate tax all play a large role in the balance of wealth. Dead Hands uncovers the tremendous social and legal importance of this rite of passage, and how it reflects changing values and priorities in American families and society.

Dead Hands traces the fascinating career of a curious imaginative device: the wandering, disembodied, or ghostly hand. Dexterously threading historical, theoretical, and formalist questions, the author situates this familiar gothic convention in its rich literary and intellectual contexts, from early modern English drama through American fiction.

A young man rushes to reach the bedside of his dying father, but arrives too late. His younger brother was present at the death, but his attitude is strangely ambiguous, and the elder brother becomes suspicious. The intentions of the dead man's mistress are also unclear. The mourners become increasingly consumed by feverish imagining, building a powerfully tense atmosphere as their characters start to disintegrate. This new play by international dramatist, poet and theorist, Howard Barker, toured in a production by The Wrestling School theatre company in 2005.

"From the exquisitely odd to the disquietingly familiar ... Six tales - lifting the frayed edges of our multi-textured times to reveal hidden regions rarely seen - where dislocated lives drift, struggle, and try to flee - betwen layers of shifting reality."--Back cover blurb

'This is a story about what might happen when a woman takes charge... A glorious visceral mystery' The Times While on her daily walk with her dog in the woods near her home, Vesta comes across a chilling handwritten note. Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body. Shaky even on her best days, Vesta is also alone, and new to the area, having moved here after the death of her husband. Her brooding about the note grows quickly into a full-blown obsession: who was Magda and how did she meet her fate? From the Booker-shortlisted author of Eileen comes this razor-sharp, chilling and darkly hilarious novel about the stories we tell ourselves and how we strive to obscure the truth. __________________________ PRAISE FOR DEATH IN HER HANDS: 'Routinely hailed as one of the most exciting young American authors working today' Guardian 'A new kind of murder mystery' New Yorker 'Dark, devious' Observer 'A fine line between shocking realism and the absurd' New Statesman 'A brilliant off-kilter detective story' Evening Standard 'A beautiful novel' Sunday Times

There is a saying that makes the claim that the only way to become an expert at something is to have first made every mistake possible. If that were true, then I should be the best golfer in the world. I’ve seen good golfers, and I’ve seen great golfers. I grew up during a time when golf wasn’t even on the map. We played team sports for the most part like baseball, basketball, football, and hockey. At the age of eighteen, I realized that these activities were going to come to a screeching halt soon and needed to find something else. So I took up golf. There was a problem back then for the athletes in my era. We were ingrained with a “baseball” swing, and that just doesn’t cut it for golf. The weight stayed on the right side, and the swing was from the outside in. Hitting fat shots and big, roundhouse slices were the norm. What could I do?