When an author finds his friend murdered, he calls on hardboiled cop Jerry Burke to track down the killer In a lonely canyon high above El Paso, a ruthless millionaire and a hardline socialist live side by side. Raymond Dwight makes money mercilessly and Leslie Young hates the rich with a passion, but the men have coexisted peacefully—so far. But when Western novelist Asa Baker escapes to Young’s cabin for a weekend of writing, he can sense tension in the air. His friend has always muttered about tossing a few bombs at Dwight’s estate, but his jokes have stopped being funny. Baker has seen enough bloodshed to know that there is murder on the horizon. When he finds Young dead on the floor, a strange mark on his cheek, Baker calls the only man who can help: Jerry Burke, the toughest cop in El Paso. In the shadowy corners of this Texas canyon lie secrets that someone will kill to protect—and Burke is the only man daring enough to uncover the truth.

A mentally ill woman is accused of killing her mother in this classic Mike Shayne novel from the legendary detective author. Mike Shayne has just poured himself a drink when Phyllis Brighton tries to throw herself out the window of his downtown apartment. Luckily, he blocks her just before she can launch herself over the sill. She tried to warn him she was crazy, but he didn’t listen. Her doctor and her new stepfather, on the other hand, both believe Phyllis is suffering from a kind of Electra complex— a fixation with her mother that is so intense that Phyllis would rather kill her than share her with anyone else. Shayne agrees to do whatever he can to keep Phyllis from killing her mother, but that doesn’t ensure that the woman will live. When Mrs. Brighton is found with a knife buried in her back, all signs point to the Phyllis’s guilt. But this hard-boiled private investigator didn’t stop someone from jumping out a window just to send her to the electric chair. And it doesn’t take a degree in psychology to find a killer—it takes brains, eyes, and two strong fists. Mike Shayne is just the man for the job. Dividend on Death is the 1st book in the Mike Shayne Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

“Deliciously macabre and utterly decadent.” —Kerri Maniscalco, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Stalking Jack the Ripper In this dark and twisty feminist historical mystery, a teenage girl starts a new life as a grave robber but quickly becomes entangled in a murderer's plans. Soon after her best friend Kitty mysteriously dies, orphaned seventeen-year-old Molly Green is sent away to live with her "aunt." With no relations that she knows of, Molly assumes she has been sold as a maid for the price of an extra donation in the church orphanage's coffers. Such a thing is not unheard of. There are only so many options for an unmarried girl in 1850s Philadelphia. Only, when Molly arrives, she discovers her aunt is very much real, exceedingly wealthy, and with secrets of her own. Secrets and wealth she intends to share—for a price. Molly's estranged aunt Ava, has built her empire by robbing graves and selling the corpses to medical students who need bodies to practice surgical procedures. And she wants Molly to help her procure the corpses. As Molly learns her aunt's trade in the dead of night and explores the mansion by day, she is both horrified and deeply intrigued by the anatomy lessons held at the old church on her aunt's property. Enigmatic Doctor LaValle's lessons are a heady mixture of knowledge and power and Molly has never wanted anything more than to join his male-only group of students. But the cost of inclusion is steep and with a murderer loose in the city, the pursuit of power and opportunity becomes a deadly dance.

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.

A day in the life of Carla Valentine - curator, pathology technician and 'death professional' - is not your average day. She spent ten years training and working as an Anatomical Pathology Technologist: where the mortuary slab was her desk, and that day's corpses her task list. Past Mortems tells Carla's stories of those years, as well as investigating the body alongside our attitudes towards death - shedding light on what the living can learn from dead and the toll the work can take on the living souls who carry it out. Fascinating and insightful, Past Mortems reveals the truth about what happens when the mortuary doors swing shut or the lid of the coffin closes.

A Huffington Post Book Club Suggestion • An O: The Oprah Magazine Fall Pick • A LitHub Book You Should Read This September • One of The Millions' "Most Anticipated" for 2016 • 2017 Ohioana Book Award Winner in Fiction “Marisa Silver’s beguiling new novel Little Nothing is a powerful exploration of the relationship between our changeable bodies and our just as malleable identities…Silver’s storytelling skills are finely matched to her themes…meditative passages bloom with life.” —Matt Bell, The New York Times Book Review A stunning, provocative new novel from New York Times bestselling author Marisa Silver, Little Nothing is the story of a girl, scorned for her physical deformity, whose passion and salvation lie in her otherworldly ability to transform herself and the world around her. In an unnamed country at the beginning of the last century, a child called Pavla is born to peasant parents. Her arrival, fervently anticipated and conceived in part by gypsy tonics and archaic prescriptions, stuns her parents and brings outrage and scorn from her community. Pavla has been born a dwarf, beautiful in face, but as the years pass, she grows no farther than the edge of her crib. When her parents turn to the treatments of a local charlatan, his terrifying cure opens the floodgates of persecution for Pavla. Little Nothing unfolds across a lifetime of unimaginable, magical transformation in and out of human form, as an outcast girl becomes a hunted woman whose ultimate survival depends on the most startling transfiguration of them all. Woven throughout is the journey of Danilo, the young man entranced by Pavla, obsessed only with protecting her. Part allegory about the shifting nature of being, part subversive fairy tale of love in all its uncanny guises, Little Nothing spans the beginning of a new century, the disintegration of ancient superstitions, and the adoption of industry and invention. With a cast of remarkable characters, a wholly original story, and extraordinary, page-turning prose, Marisa Silver delivers a novel of sheer electricity.

Hailed as a remarkable collection of short stories when it was first released in 1992, We So Seldom Look on Love is Barbara Gowdy’s wholly original and powerful look at what constitutes the ever-revolving realm of love.