She's a little girl for whom death is a very big problem. Her father scares her. There's a casket with a stranger in it in their living room, a trip in a hearse to an insane asylum, and obituaries read to her with commentary at dinner (how easy it is to die).As she grows up, she shines a light into her father's troubled behavior and, by doing so, shines a light into her own.While her story is probably quite different from yours, you're likely to find elements of your own journey within these pages as you explore the challenges that come with growing up, appreciate the experiences that enrich your life, and learn to live more fully--here, six feet above.

The blogger behind Confessions of a Funeral Director—what Time magazine called a "must read"—reflects on mortality and the powerful lessons death holds for every one of us in this compassionate and thoughtful spiritual memoir that combines the humor and insight of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes with the poignancy and brevity of When Breath Becomes Air. We are a people who deeply fear death. While humans are biologically wired to evade death for as long as possible, we have become too adept at hiding from it, vilifying it, and—when it can be avoided no longer—letting the professionals take over. Sixth-generation funeral director Caleb Wilde understands this reticence and fear. He had planned to get as far away from the family business as possible. He wanted to make a difference in the world, and how could he do that if all the people he worked with were . . . dead? Slowly, he discovered that caring for the deceased and their loved ones was making a difference—in other people’s lives to be sure, but it also seemed to be saving his own. A spirituality of death began to emerge as he observed: The family who lovingly dressed their deceased father for his burial The act of embalming a little girl that offered a gift back to her grieving family The nursing home that honored a woman’s life by standing in procession as her body was taken away The funeral that united a conflicted community Through stories like these, told with equal parts humor and poignancy, Wilde offers an intimate look into the business and a new perspective on living and dying

Winner of the 2004 Middle Grade Fiction Award from the Association for Mormon Letters. It’s bad enough that Kevin’s mother is about to graduate from mortuary college, but when his parents tell him they’re moving to a small town in the Arkansas delta to run the Paramount Funeral Home, Kevin is certain it’s his life that’s over. After all, normal people don’t live in houses with dead bodies downstairs! Once in Armadillo, Arkansas, Kevin tries to adapt to the family business. When he’s targeted by the biggest bully in the seventh grade, Kevin begins to “hear” advice from an unlikely source—Cletus McCulley, an old Mormon fisherman and one of his mother’s dead customers. Cletus’s messages from beyond the grave lead Kevin to uncover not only the bully’s secrets, but the truth about a family tragedy that shattered his parents’ faith and led them away from God. It’s up to Kevin to find the courage to face the bully, and to find a way to help his family heal.

This family business is for life... In the small town of Clover, when you die, you are put to rest by Campbell and Sons Funeral Home. Unfortunately twelve-year-old Kip Campbell happens to be the only "son" in that title. And that's a problem for him since the funeral home business is the last thing he wants to inherit, even if he has a "gift" for it. See, it just so happens that Kip can talk to the dead. Well, they talk to him, really. They tell him what they need in order to move on to the great beyond. Kip wants to move too. Straight out of Clover. He's about to give notice -- he's done helping the dead -- when he's offered a surprising deal: Find out the secret that is holding back old Billy Blye, and Kip will receive his weight in gold. That would be enough to take him far away from Clover, and Campbell and Sons Funeral Home.

Learning her ghost boyfriend isn't really dead sends Riley Smith reeling, but dead or alive she could use his support when helping the spirit of a convicted criminal leads her to being kidnapped by a street gang.

In this true story—a haunting saga of medical murder set in an era of steamships and gaslights—Gregg Olsen reveals one of the most unusual and disturbing criminal cases in American history. In 1911 two wealthy British heiresses, Claire and Dora Williamson, arrived at a sanitorium in the forests of the Pacific Northwest to undergo the revolutionary “fasting treatment” of Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard. It was supposed to be a holiday for the two sisters, but within a month of arriving at what the locals called Starvation Heights, the women underwent brutal treatments and were emaciated shadows of their former selves. Claire and Dora were not the first victims of Linda Hazzard, a quack doctor of extraordinary evil and greed. But as their jewelry disappeared and forged bank drafts began transferring their wealth to Hazzard’s accounts, the sisters came to learn that Hazzard would stop at nothing short of murder to achieve her ambitions.

A deceased undertaker still carries out his life’s work. The spirit of a nun comforts mourners. Red carnations materialize from nowhere . . . Spooky Stories from the Dismal Trade Alternately hair-raising, creepy, and touching, Mariah de la Croix’s encounters with the supernatural during her tenure as a mortician are both chilling and unforgettable. Restless in Peace recounts her true experiences working in funeral homes—and the resident spirits’ frightening, bizarre, and sometimes amusing behaviors. From the angry spirit who follows her home after work to the deceased man who likes to communicate through a microphone, this book offers a rare glimpse of living and working among the spirited dead.