Download or read book The Joy of Funerals written by Alix Strauss and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young widow who lusts, a daughter who aches, a shopaholic who hungers...The Joy of Funerals is a riveting collection that explores the lives of nine young women, each willing to take drastic measures to fill the voids created by longing and loneliness. The first eight face death differently, while the ninth woman Nina ties them all together by attending funerals in her search to connect with others. Written with raw wit, mordant humor and a uniquely penetrating voice, Strauss turns the spotlight on loss and grief. In the vein of Six Feet Under, this is a provocative look into the inner world of those left behind, and those still holding on. "The desire for human connection runs throughout Alix Strauss's dark and spirited novel, The Joy of Funerals." - Vanity Fair

Download or read book Animal Crackers written by Bridget Marshall and published by . This book was released on 1997-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When her grandmother starts forgetting things, has to go into a nursing home and then dies, a young girl tries to remember the good times they had shared.

Download or read book The Joy of Funerals written by Alix Strauss and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2004-04-09 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young widow who lusts, a daughter who aches, a shopaholic who hungers...The Joy of Funerals is a riveting collection that explores the lives of nine young women, each willing to take drastic measures to fill the voids created by longing and loneliness. The first eight face death differently, while the ninth woman Nina ties them all together by attending funerals in her search to connect with others. Written with raw wit, mordant humor and a uniquely penetrating voice, Strauss turns the spotlight on loss and grief. In the vein of Six Feet Under, this is a provocative look into the inner world of those left behind, and those still holding on. "The desire for human connection runs throughout Alix Strauss's dark and spirited novel, The Joy of Funerals." - Vanity Fair

Download or read book Nine Expensive Funerals written by Hayden Smith and published by . This book was released on 2020-11-16 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: His friend was killed. Who's next? Tom O'Banion loves his hometown of Muskegon, Michigan. He has his dream job as the choral director at Muskegon High School. He has a beautiful teacher friend, Maria, that he's hoping he'll marry. One of his best friends, Fred, is the mayor and they are in sync about how to make Muskegon even better than it is. Dark forces threaten to shake Tom's good life. The "Group of Nine" don't like the mayor's plans - they want to keep running the town the way they always have, and they're willing to kill to keep the mayor in line. To find the killer, Tom puts his own and Maria's life in danger. He just can't let them get away with it. He joins forces with the police to help make certain the city and its good people survive this threat and justice is served.

Download or read book Reimagining Death written by Lucinda Herring and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honor your loved ones and the earth by choosing practical, spiritual, and eco-friendly after-death care Natural, legal, and innovative after-death care options are transforming the paradigm of the existing funeral industry, helping families and communities recover their instinctive capacity to care for a loved one after death and do so in creative and healing ways. Reimagining Death offers stories and guidance for home funeral vigils, advance after-death care directives, green burials, and conscious dying. When we bring art and beauty, meaningful ritual, and joy to ease our loss and sorrow, we are greening the gateway of death and returning home to ourselves, to the wisdom of our bodies, and to the earth.

Download or read book Poems and Readings for Funerals written by Julia Watson and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2004-04-01 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Words of sadness and loss, comfort and consolation Summoning the words to express our feelings of loss for a loved one in the days following a death can feel almost impossible. And often the choice of readings available can seem daunting. Poems and Readings for Funerals is a carefully curated collection of the very wisest words about death by some of the world's greatest poets, thinkers, playwrights and novelists. Featuring beautifully and thoughtfully written poems, prose extracts and prayers, these readings have been chosen to move and console, sympathize and relieve - to bring everyone attending a funeral or memorial closer together.

Download or read book Funerals written by Tim Perry and published by Lexham Press. This book was released on 2021-05-05 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Death will strike your congregation. Are you ready? Are they? Death has become a four-letter word. Whereas in previous generations, the practice of memento mori ("remember death") was embedded in family life, people today have found ways to distance themselves from death. As Western culture becomes increasingly more secular, the Christian understanding of death and the funeral appear more and more strange. Fear of death affects us all, and so pastors have significant hurdles to overcome. What Christians need today is a renewed vision of the traditional Christian funeral liturgy. In Funerals, Tim Perry recovers the rich theology inherent to the Christian funeral: communion with the saints in death, peace in forgiveness, hope in the resurrection, and joy in life eternal. Perry guides pastors through the practice of funerals, from planning the service to preaching the eulogy, and offers wisdom for the hard cases. Perry's Funerals will help pastors disciple their people to see through the valley of the shadow of death and into the hope beyond.

Download or read book Two Funerals Then Easter written by Rachel Joy Welcher and published by . This book was released on 2018-12 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The world doesn't need any more pretentious or self-absorbed words. We need words of beauty and grace, grit and hope. We need poetry that sounds like the language of our own heart, verse that tells the stories we long to hear when we're alone, cold, in the dead of night. We need words that make us more human, that rouse our faith. And here, we have it."-Winn Collier, author of Holy Curiosity and Love Big. Be Well.

Download or read book Funeral for a Stranger written by Becca Stevens and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 101 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I have seen water move rocks. I have seen thistles break through boulders. If water and flowers can move stones, surely love can. Becca Stevens, from Funeral for a Stranger In this meditation on living and dying, Becca Stevens shares moving and hilarious stories about her life, love, friends, and our many families. This delicately formed narrative is also a window into the soul of a priest. I loved it and will hold it in my heart with gratitude for years to come. -Phyllis Tickle, author of The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why Loneliness finds connections, depair meets celebration, and fear discovers faith. Join Becca on her journey to a funeral for a stranger. God will be there. -Don Schlitz, Hall of Fame songwriter of The Gambler With elegant simplicity Becca Stevens escorts the reader to the banks of the deepest spiritual wellspring. Surely she ranks among our most gifted teachers on the things that matter most of all. -Stephen Bauman, author of Simple Truths: On Values, Civility, and Our Common Good

Download or read book Annie Freeman s Fabulous Traveling Funeral written by Kris Radish and published by Listening Library. This book was released on 2006 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annie Freeman, left one final request, a traveling funeral, and she wants the most important women in her life as pallbearers. From Sonoma to Manhattan, Katherine, Laura, Rebecca, Jill, and Marie will carry Annie's ashes to the special places in her life. At every stop there's a surprise encounter and a small miracle waiting, and as they whoop it up across the country, attracting interest wherever they go, they share their deepest secrets--tales of broken hearts and second chances, missed opportunities and new beginnings. And as they grieve over what they've lost, they discover how much is still possible if only they can unravel the secret Annie left them.

Download or read book Being Dead Is No Excuse written by Gayden Metcalfe and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2012-08-14 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hilarious guide to the intricate rituals, customs, and etiquette surrounding death in the South-and a practical collection of recipes for the final send-off. As author Gayden Metcalfe asserts, people in the Delta have a strong sense of community, and being dead is no impediment to belonging to it. Down south, they don't forget you when you've up and died-they may even like you better and visit you more often! But just as there is an appropriate way to live your life in the South, there is an equally essentially tasteful way of departing it-and the funeral is the final social event of your existence so it must be handled flawlessly. Metcalfe portrays this slice of American culture from the manners, customs, and the tomato aspic with mayonnaise that characterize the Delta way of death. Southerners love to swap tales, and Gayden Metcalfe, native of Greenville, MS, founder of the Greenville Arts Council and chairman of the St. James Episcopal Church Bazaar, is steeped in the stories and traditions of this rich region. She reminisces about the prominent family that drank too much and got the munchies the night before the big event-and left not a crumb for the funeral (Naturally some early rising, quick-witted ladies from the church saved the day, so the story demonstrates some solutions to potential entertaining disasters!). Then there was the lady who allocated money to have "Home on the Range" sung at the service, and the family that insisted on a portrait of their mother in her casket, only to refuse to pay for it on the grounds that "Mama looks so sad." Each chapter ends with an authentic southern recipe that will come in handy if you "plan to die tastefully", including Boiled Bourbon Custard; Aunt Hebe's Coconut Cake; Pickled Shrimp; Homemade Mayonnaise; and Homemade Rolls.

Download or read book Time to Go written by Jean Francis and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When it's Time to Go we all have to make this journey, whether it is by a conventional route or a more unusual one. This book will stimulate conversation on what has for decades been a taboo subject and includes: . Ideas for pre planning a funeral or memorial gathering relieving loved ones of making decisions while in a state of grief. . Guidance on selecting a place of rest befitting the deceased. . Hundreds of suggestions for creating a personal and meaningful right of passage. . Inspiring insights into ceremonies to honour the beliefs and lifestyle of the deceased. . Practical ideas for those wishing to participate in the funeral of a loved one . Creative thoughts for arranging a funeral in an environmentally friendly way. . Simple guidelines for burial on private land. . Funerals that do not cost a fortune. . Memorials that are different.

Download or read book Good Mourning written by Elizabeth Meyer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elizabeth Meyer’s “sweet, touching, and funny” (Booklist) memoir reads as if “Carrie Bradshaw worked in a funeral home a la Six Feet Under” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Good Mourning offers a behind-the-scenes look at a legendary funeral chapel on New York City’s Upper East Side—mixing big money, society drama, and the universal experience of grieving—told from the unique perspective of a fashionista turned funeral planner. Elizabeth Meyer stumbled upon a career in the midst of planning her own father’s funeral, which she turned into an upbeat party with Rolling Stones music, thousands of dollars worth of her mother’s favorite flowers, and a personalized eulogy. Starting as a receptionist, Meyer quickly found she had a knack for helping people cope with their grief, as well as creating fitting send-offs for some of the city’s most high-powered residents. Meyer has seen it all: two women who found out their deceased husband (yes, singular) was living a double life, a famous corpse with a missing brain, and funerals that cost more than most weddings. By turns illuminating, emotional, and darkly humorous, Good Mourning is a lesson in how the human heart grieves and grows—whether you’re wearing this season’s couture or drug-store flip-flops.

Download or read book Tell Me Papa written by Joy Johnson and published by Center for Thanatology Research &. This book was released on 1990 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains what death is, what happens at a funeral, and how a funeral service is a way of saying goodbye to a dead person.

Download or read book Four Funerals and a Wedding written by Jill Smolowe and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When journalist Jill Smolowe buried her husband, sister, mother, and mother-in-law in the space of seventeen months, she assumed that it was only a matter of time before she fell apart. That’s what all the movies and memoirs say will happen, after all. But when she never “lost it”—and when friends began to insist that her strength was amazing and unusual—she began to think there might be something freakish about her way of grieving, so she did what any self-respecting journalist would: she researched it. In Four Funerals and a Wedding, Smolowe jostles preconceptions about caregiving, defies clichés about losing loved ones, and reveals a stunning bottom line: far from being uncommon, resilience like hers is the norm among the recently bereaved. With humor and quiet wisdom, and with a lens firmly trained on what helped her tolerate so much sorrow and rebound from so much loss in her own life, she offers answers to questions we all confront in the face of loss, and ultimately reminds us all that grief is not only about endings—it’s about new beginnings.

Download or read book The Gatecrasher written by Madeleine Wickham and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gold digger woos a widower in a “modern day novel of manners . . . [with] memorable characters . . . as unpredictable and multifaceted as they are stylish” (Publishers Weekly). Madeleine Wickham is Sophie Kinsella, and The Gatecrasher is just as delicious as her internationally bestselling Shopaholic series. Everything’s coming up roses for Fleur Daxeny, as she goes through more rich men than she does designer hats. Beautiful and utterly irresistible, her success at crashing funerals to find wealthy men is remarkable. Fleur wastes no time in seducing her latest conquest, the handsome and rich widower Richard Favour. His children are caught up in a whirlwind as their father’s new girlfriend descends on the family estate. Fleur is not one to wear her heart on her Chanel sleeves, but she soon finds herself embracing Richard and his family. But just as Fleur contemplates jumping off the gold-digger train for good, a long-buried secret from her past threatens to destroy her new family. “Witty and deeply biting. . . . Wickham’s characters move with the studied grace of Jane Austen’s upper class. . . . Readers will be both touched and entertained.” —Library Journal “An observant and engaging storyteller.” —Kirkus Reviews “An enjoyable read.” —Booklist

Download or read book Putting the Fun in Funeral written by Diana Pharaoh Francis and published by . This book was released on 2023-10-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beck Wyatt has always hated her mother-enough to kill her. As luck would have it, someone beats her to murdering Mommy Dearest and now Beck gets to plan the tackiest funeral the world has ever seen for the worst woman she's ever known.But first, Beck has a few minor problems to deal with. First on the list? Avoid getting kidnapped. She also has to convince the police she didn't kill her mother. And then there's surviving a death curse ¿.With the help of her three best friends, cheesecake, and a little magic, Beck figures she can handle anything, even the mysterious and irritating Damon Matroviani, whose sexy good-looks light her panties on fire.All too soon, her life is turned inside out, and just when things are looking like they can't get any worse ¿ everything hits the fan.