Death & Dying

Written after his wife's tragic death, A Grief Observed is C.S. Lewis's honest reflection on the fundamental issues of life, death, and faith in the midst of loss....

Imagine you are dying with a secret. Something you've never had the courage to tell your friends and family. Or a last wish - a task you need carried out before you can rest in peace....

A private investigator with a haunting past, Bill Edgar's life was never destined to be ordinary. Rising to international fame as the 'Coffin Confessor' - the man who crashes funerals on behalf of the deceased, giving voice to their last wishes - Bill dismantled many of the assumptions we hold...

Following Kate Marshall’s first year in the mortuary at a north of England NHS hospital, with each month exploring the people she meets, in life and death, as well as her own growing awareness of life behind the veil....

Professor Alice Roberts combines archaeological finds with cutting-edge DNA research and written history to shed fresh light on how people lived: by examining the stories of the dead....

Medical historian Dr Suzie Edge examines 1,000 years of royal deaths to present a humorous deep-dive into the varied—and oft-gruesome—deaths of the king and queens of England and Scotland....

An oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem....

As a medical detective of the modern world, forensic pathologist Ryan Blumenthal’s chief goal is to bring perpetrators to justice. He has performed thousands of autopsies, which have helped bring numerous criminals to book....

Playing Possum explores what the opossum and other creatures can teach us about how we and other species understand mortality, and demonstrates that the concept of death, far from being a uniquely human attribute, is widespread in the animal kingdom.

Final Exit is the most famous book on voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide....

The powerful memoir of a young doctor and former college athlete diagnosed with a rare disease who spearheaded the search for a cure - and became a champion for a new approach to medical research....

Through stories of survival, resilience, and even rebellion, Mueller and Abrutyn show how social environments can cause suicide and how they can be changed to help kids discover a life worth living.

Here, in 14 accessible chapters, from the "Lesson of Love" to the "Lesson of Happiness", the authors reveal the truth about our fears....

Out of the 120 billion humans who have ever lived, you're lucky to live now. Whether it's a pill, an injection, or a life-saving surgery, today's medicine has a much greater chance of being there for you when you need it most, compared to what our ancestors could access.

What exactly are the weird and the eerie? In this new essay, Mark Fisher argues that some of the most haunting and anomalous fiction of the 20th century belongs to these two modes....

The Buddhist approach to death can be of great benefit to people of all backgrounds - as has been demonstrated time and again in Joan Halifax's decades of work....

Like so many of us, award-winning writer Katy Butler always assumed her aging parents would experience healthy, active retirements before dying peacefully at home....

The long-awaited essay collection from one of the most influential voices in disability activism that detonates a bomb in our collective understanding of care and illness shows us us that sickness is a fact of life.

The first book that explains how to open to the immensity of living with death—and how participating fully in life is the perfect preparation for whatever may come next.

The Third Man Factor is an extraordinary account of how people at the very edge of death often sense an unseen presence beside them who encourages them survive....

From economist Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton, a groundbreaking account of how the flaws in capitalism are fatal for America's working class....

The Long Grief Journey, cowritten by a psychotherapist and a clinical psychologist who have both worked with grieving individuals for decades, is for the people who are past the acute pain and effects of a sudden loss and are now learning to live beyond that....

In his mid-40s, Simon Boas was diagnosed with incurable cancer - it had been caught too late, and spread around his body. But he was determined to die as he had learned to live - optimistically, thinking the best of people, and prioritising what really matters in life.

A Columbia University physician inspires us to rethink death and offers insights on how we can learn to embrace the art of dying well in this wise, clear-eyed book that is as compelling and soulful as Being Mortal, When Breath Becomes Air, and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes....

For centuries, people who died destitute or alone were buried in potters’ fields—a Dickensian end that even the most hard-pressed families tried to avoid. Today, more and more relatives are abandoning their dead, leaving it to local governments to dispose of the bodies.