A former All-American shose NFL prospects ended abruptly after a cheap shot to the knees, Neely has returned home for the first time in years to join a nightly vigil for Coach Eddie Rake at the Messina stadium. Having wandered through life with little focus since his college days, Neely struggles to reconcile his conflicted feelings towards his former coach, and he assays to rekindle love in the ex-girlfriend he abandoned long ago.

The undertaker's wife waits; she weaves; she builds. The undertaker practices his art, the Dismal Trade, with consummate skill. He has raised it to an art through the high craft of the Connable Method. Through it, he has managed to transform the ugliness of death into a thing of dignity and beauty. Victims brutalized by war, street fights, tavern brawls, ambushes, fires, and every hazard in a raw West, these, in his hands, become presentable. Everywhere...

A woman struggles to reconcile herself with the memory of a child she aborted nine years previously.

Best-selling author of The Sunday List of Dreams, journalist and nationally syndicated columnist Kris Radish creates vividly imagined female characters who seem to jump from the pages. In Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral, Katherine Givens befriends the four other women who, through the unexpected circumstance of their recently deceased friend Annie Freeman's last will and testament, are about to share a life-affirming road trip

This story of a young woman's confrontation with death and her past is a poetic study of human relations. "The Optimist's Daughter" is the story of Laurel McKelva Hand, a young woman who has left the South and returns, years later, to New Orleans, where her father is dying. After his death, she and her silly young stepmother go back still farther, to the small Mississippi town where she grew up. Alone in the old house, Laurel finally comes to an understanding...

"Planning a memorial with flowers, music, and food isn't that different from a wedding, right? But Liz has had a crippling fear of death since losing her younger sister in a childhood tragedy. Knowing her husband and twin sons depend on her income, she reluctantly agrees to produce end-of-life events. As Gabbi promised, the money starts rolling in. When an old real estate tycoon hires them to plan his 'after party, ' Liz finds an unlikely mentor....

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...