Laurel Hand, long absent from the South, comes from Chicago to New Orleans, where her father dies after surgery. With Fay, the stupid new young wife of her father, Laurel returns to her former Mississippi home and stays a few days after the funeral for reunions with old friends. In a night alone in the house she grew up in, she confronts elements of the past and comes to a better understanding of it and of herself and her parents.

In Jamaica, Sareen is concerned about participating in her first sit-up, a celebration of the life of her recently deceased grandmother, but discovers that sharing her stories of Nana's passion for mangoes helps lift the sadness.

Jack Mauser's former wives, Eleanor, Candice, Marlis, and Dot are stranded together in a blizzard after Jack's funeral.

A shoreside burial coordinator who lives in self-enforced exile as penance for a long-ago mistake and a performer with a floating circus face unexpected life changes and new opportunities in the wake of an offshore storm.

From Ann Cleeves--bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows--comes the first in a gripping new series. "Ann Cleeves is one of my favorite mystery writers."--Louise Penny In North Devon, where two rivers converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his father's funeral takes place. Once loved and cherished, the day Matthew left the strict evangelical community...

Caught up in a moment of boyhood competition, William Bellman recklessly aims his slingshot at a rook resting on a branch, killing the bird instantly. It is a small but cruel act and is soon forgotten. By the time he is grown, with a wife and children of his own, William seems to have put the whole incident behind him. It was as if he never killed the thing at all. But rooks dont forget. Years later, when a stranger mysteriously enters Williams life,...

Escaping school and family problems in a cemetery, fourteen-year-old Allie begins attending strangers' funerals, which leads to her first real friendship and a mystery that she believes only she can solve.

The untimely death of her single mother, Margaret Batten, brings Sunny back to small-town King George, New Hampshire, the scene of her unhappy adolescence, where she discovers old family secrets and a possible half-brother she never knew she had.

Nathan Clark, a recently deceased schoolteacher, returns in spectral form to observe his own funeral and learns more about his family and friends--in death--than he had ever known while he was alive, but the information he discovers carries dark foreboding and forces him to uncover an ominous secret.

"One summer's day we started a business called Funerals Ltd, to help all the poor dead animals in the world. Esther did the digging, I wrote the poems, and Esther's little brother, Puttie, cried."--Page [4] of cover.