Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Marlena - Julie Buntin

Mortality - Christopher Hitchens

When breath becomes air - Paul Kalanithi

The book thief - Markus Zusak

The book thief - Zusak, Markus

Summary: Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.



Kirkus Reviews
When Death tells a story, you pay attention. Liesel Meminger is a young girl growing up outside of Munich in Nazi Germany, and Death tells her story as "an attempt—a flying jump of an attempt—to prove to me that you, and your human existence, are worth it." When her foster father helps her learn to read and she discovers the power of words, Liesel begins stealing books from Nazi book burnings and the mayor's wife's library. As she becomes a better reader, she becomes a writer, writing a book about her life in such a miserable time. Liesel's experiences move Death to say, "I am haunted by humans." How could the human race be "so ugly and so glorious" at the same time? This big, expansive novel is a leisurely working out of fate, of seemingly chance encounters and events that ultimately touch, like dominoes as they collide. The writing is elegant, philosophical and moving. Even at its length, it's a work to read slowly and savor. Beautiful and important. (Fiction. 12+) Copyright Kirkus 2006 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

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Secondhand souls - Christopher Moore

Summary: Something really strange is happening in the City by the Bay. People are dying, but their souls are not being collected. Someone -- or something -- is stealing them and no one knows where they are going, or why, but it has something to do with that big orange bridge. Death Merchant Charlie Asher is just as flummoxed as everyone else. He's trapped in the body of a fourteen-inch-tall "meat" waiting for his Buddhist nun girlfriend, Audrey, to find him a suitable new body to play host. To get to the bottom of this abomination, a motley crew of heroes will band together: the seven-foot-tall death merchant Minty Fresh; retired policeman turned bookseller Alphonse Rivera; the Emperor of San Francisco and his dogs, Bummer and Lazarus; and Lily, the former Goth girl. Now if only they can get little Sophie to stop babbling about the coming battle for the very soul of humankind...


LJ Express Reviews

Charlie Asher, widowed father, death merchant, beta male, is back. One year following his heroic death fighting harpies and saving San Francisco from the forces of darkness (A Dirty Job), Charlie finds his soul trapped in a 14-inch-tall body that looks like something out of a nightmare. Meanwhile, his sister Cassie and her wife are raising his young daughter, Sophie, who may be the living embodiment of Death. However, Sophie's protective hellhounds have disappeared, the deadly Morrigan are back, the souls of the dead go uncollected, and a man dressed in yellow seems to be everywhere, causing mayhem. Charlie needs a new body before he can reveal his not-dead state to his friends and family, figure out if Sophie can still kill with one little word, and save the day. Verdict Moore has written a solid and darkly funny sequel that will delight fans as they catch up with familiar characters and follow Charlie and his friends through another adventure. Expect demand from Moore devotees, and have the previous book ready for new readers, too. What's more, the cover glows in the dark, and who could resist that? [See Prepub Alert, 2/9/15.]—Jennifer Beach, Cumberland Cty. P.L., VA (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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This is Where I Leave You - Jonathan Tropper

This is Where I Leave You - Tropper, Jonathan

Summary: Judd Foxman is thrown together with his dysfunctional family when his father dies, while at the same time coping with his wife's infidelity and the end of his marriage.





Booklist Reviews
Judd Foxman is in his late thirties when he finds himself living in a damp, moldy basement apartment, without a job and separated from his wife, who is having an affair with his now ex-boss. To make matters worse, Judd finds out his wife is pregnant with his child and that his father has just died, leaving a dying wish to have all four of his children sit shivah for seven days. What transpires over the course of that week is a Foxman family reunion like no other; filled with fistfights, arguments, sex, and a parade of characters offering their sympathies and copious amounts of food. This is a story that could be told by your best guy friend: laugh-out-loud funny, intimate, honest, raunchy, and thoroughly enjoyable. Tropper is spot-on with his observations of family relationships as each member deals with new grief, old resentments, and life's funny twists of fate. Tropper's characters are real, flawed, and very likable, making for a great summer read.

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The Fault in Our Stars - John Green

The Fault in Our Stars - Green, John

Summary: Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few more years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis, but when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at the Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* At 16, Hazel Grace Lancaster, a three-year stage IV–cancer survivor, is clinically depressed. To help her deal with this, her doctor sends her to a weekly support group where she meets Augustus Waters, a fellow cancer survivor, and the two fall in love. Both kids are preternaturally intelligent, and Hazel is fascinated with a novel about cancer called An Imperial Affliction. Most particularly, she longs to know what happened to its characters after an ambiguous ending. To find out, the enterprising Augustus makes it possible for them to travel to Amsterdam, where Imperial's author, an expatriate American, lives. What happens when they meet him must be left to readers to discover. Suffice it to say, it is significant. Writing about kids with cancer is an invitation to sentimentality and pathos—or worse, in unskilled hands, bathos. Happily, Green is able to transcend such pitfalls in his best and most ambitious novel to date. Beautifully conceived and executed, this story artfully examines the largest possible considerations—life, love, and death—with sensitivity, intelligence, honesty, and integrity. In the process, Green shows his readers what it is like to live with cancer, sometimes no more than a breath or a heartbeat away from death. But it is life that Green spiritedly celebrates here, even while acknowledging its pain. In its every aspect, this novel is a triumph.

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Noggin - John Corey Whaley

Noggin - Whaley, John Corey

Summary: After dying at age sixteen, Travis Coates' head was removed and frozen for five years before being attached to another body, and now the old Travis and the new must find a way to coexist while figuring out changes in his relationships.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Travis Coates has lost his head—literally. As he dies from acute lymphoblastic leukemia, his head is surgically removed and cryogenically frozen. Five years pass, and, thanks to advances in medical science, it becomes possible to reanimate his head and attach it to a donor body. Travis Coates is alive again, but while his family and friends are all 5 years older, Travis hasn't aged—he is still 16 and a sophomore in high school. Awkward? Difficult? Puzzling? You bet. In the past, the two people he could have talked to about this were his best friend, Kyle, and his girlfriend, Cate. But now they're part of the problem. Kyle, who came out to Travis on his deathbed, has gone back into the closet, and Cate is engaged to be married. Stubbornly, Travis vows to reverse these developments by coaxing Kyle out of the closet and persuading Cate to fall in love with him again. How this plays out is the substance of this wonderfully original, character-driven second novel. Whaley has written a tour de force of imagination and empathy, creating a boy for whom past, present, and future come together in an implied invitation to readers to wonder about the very nature of being. A sui generis novel of ideas, Noggin demands much of its readers, but it offers them equally rich rewards. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Whaley's sleeper debut, Where Things Come Back (2011), won both the Michael L. Printz Award and the William C. Morris Award, so readers will be eagerly awaiting this second effort. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.

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The bear - Claire Cameron

The bear - Claire Cameron

Summary: "A powerfully suspenseful story narrated by a young girl who must fend for herself and her little brother after a brutal bear attack. While camping with her family on a remote island, five-year-old Anna awakes in the night to the sound of her mother screaming. A rogue black bear, 300 pounds of fury, is attacking the family's campsite, pouncing on her parents as prey. At her dying mother's faint urging, Anna manages to get her brother into the family's canoe and paddle away. But when the canoe dumps the two children on the edge of the woods, and the sister and brother must battle hunger, the elements, and a dangerous wilderness, we see Anna's heartbreaking love for her family--and her struggle to be brave when nothing in her world seems safe anymore. Told in the honest, raw voice of five-year-old Anna, this is a riveting story of love, courage, and survival"-- Provided by publisher.

Publishers Weekly Reviews
Inspired by a fatal 1991 bear attack on a couple camping on an island in Ontario's Algonquin Park, Cameron's novel of fear and survival recounts the fictional escape from a similar attack of five-year-old Anna and her two-year-old brother, Alex (nicknamed "Stick" for his sticky fingers). Anna's narrative begins midattack after her father has tossed her and her brother into the storage chest they call "Coleman." Squished in the darkness between Stick and her teddy bear, Anna sees a black furry animal through a crack, but all she can picture is her next-door neighbor's dog Snoopy. In daylight, she climbs out of Coleman to discover what remains of her father and to catch her mother's last words urging her to put her brother in the canoe and paddle away. What follows is a vividly portrayed wilderness ordeal (poison ivy, hunger, rain, isolation) juxtaposed with glimpses of the inner resources young Anna draws upon (imagination, family, memory, hope), all seen through the eyes of a child who can express, if not entirely understand, her own resentment and protectiveness of her brother, her love and longing for her parents, her fear and empathy for the predator, and her determination to persevere. Upping the emotional ante, Cameron shows the children's rescue, Anna's encounter in a hospital with a child psychologist, and, years later, her return to the island with Alex as adults. Intensity, as well as Anna's voice, make reading this book a challenging but ultimately uplifting experience. (Feb.)

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Dark triumph - Robin LaFevers

Dark triumph - LaFevers, Robin

Series: His Fair Assassin

Summary: "Sybella's duty as Death's assassin in 15th-century France forces her return home to the personal hell that she had finally escaped. Love and romance, history and magic, vengeance and salvation converge in this sequel to Grave Mercy"-- Provided by publisher.

Staff Comments: Grave Mercy had me in its grip within the first three pages, and Dark Triumph is just as engrossing, if not more so.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* The riveting historical adventure that began with Grave Mercy (2012) here follows the story of another of Death's handmaidens, Sybella. Backtracking just a bit, the story starts with the climactic event of the previous book: Sybella warns Isme, her dear friend and fellow killer from the convent of St. Mortrain, that troops protecting Brittany's young duchess are riding into a trap to be sprung by Sybella's despotic father. The story's parameters are the same as in the previous book (the struggle between various forces to decide Brittany's fate, the relationship between the young women trained in the deathly arts and the saint who directs them); and once again the tale is filled with vicious battles, heart-stopping escapes, and intricately devised scenarios. However, in this book the wounds are deeper as Sybella must come to terms with her past and how her secrets tie and untie her to a knight who is the bane of her existence and her hope for the future. LaFevers is that wonderful sort of storyteller who so completely meshes events, descriptions, and characters that readers get lost in the world she has concocted. It's a place where history mingles with mystery, and love is never expected. With one more daughter of Death seeking her fate, readers can expect a sequel. But how will they stand the wait? HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Grave Mercy debuted to starred reviews as far as the eye could see. That and an impressive PR campaign means this should be heavily in demand. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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Chronicle of a death foretold - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Chronicle of a death foretold - Garcia Marquez, Gabriel

Summary: The narrator of this story studies a murder which takes place shortly after a wedding and explores the mass community complicity that allowed it to happen.




Kirkus Review
/* Starred Review */ In this new novella by the Nobel Prize-winner, a Colombian-village murder 20 years in the past is raked over, brooded upon, made into a parable: how an Arab living in the town was assassinated by the loutish twin Vicario brothers when their sister, a new bride, was rejected by her bridegroom--who discovered the girl's unchastity. Cast off, beaten, grilled, the girl eventually revealed the name of her corrupter--Santiago Nassar. And, though no one really believed her (Nassar was the least likely villain), the Arab was indeed killed: the drunken brothers broadcasted their intentions casually; they went so far as to sharpen their murder weapons--old pig-sticking knives--in the town market; and the town, universal witness to the intention, reacted with epic ambivalence--sure, at first, that such an injustice couldn't occur, yet also resigned to its inevitability. As in In Evil Hour (1979) and other works, then, what Garcia Marquez offers here is an orchestration of grim social realities--an awareness that seems vague at first, then coheres into a solid, pessimistic vision. But, while In Evil Hour threaded the message with wit, fanciful imagination, and storytelling flair (the traits which have made Garcia Marquez popular as well as honored), this new book seems crammed, airless, thinly diagrammatic. The theme of historical imperative comes across in a didactic, mechanistic fashion: "He never thought it legitimate," G-M says of one character, ironically, "that life should make use of so many coincidences forbidden literature, so there should be the untrammeled fulfillment of a death so clearly foretold." (Also, the novella's structural lines are uncomfortably close to those of Robert Pinget's Libera Me Domine.) So, while the recent Nobel publicity will no doubt generate added interest, this is minor, lesser Garcia Marquez: characteristic themes illustrated without the often-characteristic charm and dazzle. (Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 1983)

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Grave mercy - Robin LaFevers

Grave mercy - LaFevers, Robin

Summary: In the fifteenth-century kingdom of Brittany, seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where she learns that the god of Death has blessed her with dangerous gifts--and a violent destiny.


Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* In the late fifteenth century, Mortain, the god of death, has sired Ismae to be his handmaiden. She will carry out his wishes by working through the Convent, where she has found refuge from a brutal father and husband. After learning the Convent's wily warfare and womanly arts, and being apprenticed to Sister Serafina (poisons mistress and Convent healer), 17-year-old Ismae is sent to the high court of Brittany, ostensibly as the cousin (aka mistress) of the Breton noble Duval—but, in truth, she is there as a spy. Her tacit assignment is to protect the young duchess by assassinating Duval if he proves to be a traitor, a charge made more difficult because of the couple's attraction to each other. LaFevers has written a dark, sophisticated novel true to the fairy-tale conventions of castles, high courts, and good versus evil, and spiced with poison potions; violent (and sometimes merciful) assassinations; subtle seductions; and gentle, perfect love. With characters that will inspire the imagination, a plot that nods to history while defying accuracy, and a love story that promises more in the second book, this is sure to attract feminist readers and romantics alike. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: With a $100,000 marketing campaign, including national print, online, and social-media outreach; a video trailer; and a vintage T-shirt promotion, the publisher is pushing LaFevers' novel in a big way. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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The graveyard book - Neil Gaiman

The graveyard book - Gaiman, Neil

Summary: After the grisly murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a graveyard where the ghosts and other supernatural residents agree to raise him as one of their own.




Kirkus Reviews
Wistful, witty, wise, and creepy. Gaiman's riff on Kipling's Mowgli stories never falters, from the truly spine-tingling opening, in which a toddler accidentally escapes his family's murderer, to the melancholy, life-affirming ending. Bod (short for Nobody) finds solace and safety with the inhabitants of the local graveyard, who grant him some of the privileges and powers of the dead—he can Fade and Dreamwalk, for instance, but still needs to eat and breathe. Episodic chapters tell miniature gems of stories (one has been nominated for a Locus Award) tracing Bod's growth from a spoiled boy who runs away with the ghouls to a young man for whom the metaphor of setting out into the world becomes achingly real. Childhood fears take solid shape in the nursery-rhyme–inspired villains, while heroism is its own, often bitter, reward. Closer in tone to American Gods than to Coraline, but permeated with Bod's innocence, this needs to be read by anyone who is or has ever been a child. (Illustrations not seen.) (Fantasy. 10 & up) Copyright Kirkus 2008 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.


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Stiff - Mary Roach

Stiff: the curious life of human cadavers - Roach, Mary

Summary: Stiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For two thousand years, cadavers--some willingly, some unwittingly--have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. In this fascinating account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries and tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them.

Publishers Weekly
"Uproariously funny" doesn't seem a likely description for a book on cadavers. However, Roach, a Salon and Reader's Digest columnist, has done the nearly impossible and written a book as informative and respectful as it is irreverent and witty. From her opening lines ("The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back"), it is clear that she's taking a unique approach to issues surrounding death. Roach delves into the many productive uses to which cadavers have been put, from medical experimentation to applications in transportation safety research (in a chapter archly called "Dead Man Driving") to work by forensic scientists quantifying rates of decay under a wide array of bizarre circumstances. There are also chapters on cannibalism, including an aside on dumplings allegedly filled with human remains from a Chinese crematorium, methods of disposal (burial, cremation, composting) and "beating-heart" cadavers used in organ transplants. Roach has a fabulous eye and a wonderful voice as she describes such macabre situations as a plastic surgery seminar with doctors practicing face-lifts on decapitated human heads and her trip to China in search of the cannibalistic dumpling makers. Even Roach's digressions and footnotes are captivating, helping to make the book impossible to put down.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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The year of magical thinking - Joan Didion

The year of magical thinking - Didion, Joan

Summary: An autobiographical portrait of marriage and motherhood by the acclaimed author details her struggle to come to terms with life and death, illness, sanity, personal upheaval, and grief. - (Baker & Taylor)




Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ Didion--a master essayist, great American novelist, and astute political observer--uses autobiography as a vehicle for tonic inquiries into both the self and society. In Where I Was From (2003), she meshed family history with an examination of America's romance with the West. Here, in her most personal and generous book to date, she chronicles a year of grief with her signature blend of intellectual rigor and deep feeling. The ordeal began on Christmas 2003 when Didion and her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, learn that their daughter, Quintana Roo, is in intensive care with severe pneumonia and septic shock. Five grim days later, Dunne and Didion come home from the hospital, sit down to dinner, and Dunne suffers "a sudden massive coronary event" and dies. Married for 40 years and sharing a passion for literature, they were inordinately close. But Didion could not give herself over to grief: Quintana's health went from bad to worse as she developed a life-threatening hematoma on her brain. She survived, and Didion had the wherewithal to cope: "In times of trouble, I had been trained since childhood, read, learn, work it up, go the literature. Information was control." So she researches grief, schools herself in her daughter's medical conditions, and monitors the flux of flashbacks and fears that strobe through her mind. Didion describes with compelling precision exactly how grief feels, and how it impairs rational thought and triggers "magical thinking." The result is a remarkably lucid and ennobling anatomy of grief, matched by a penetrating tribute to marriage, motherhood, and love. ((Reviewed August 2005)) Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.

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Sing them home - Stephanie Kallos

Sing them home - Kallos, Stephanie

Summary: Everyone in Emlyn Springs knows the story of Hope Jones, the physician's wife whose big dreams for their tiny town were lost along with her in the tornado of 1978. For Hope's three young children, the stability of life with their preoccupied father, and with Viney, their mother's spitfire best friend, is no match for Hope's absence. Larken, the eldest, is now an art history professor who seeks in food an answer to a less tangible hunger; Gaelan, the son, is a telegenic weatherman who devotes his life to predicting the unpredictable; and the youngest, Bonnie, is a self-proclaimed archivist who combs roadsides for clues to her mother's legacy, and permission to move on. When they're summoned home after their father's death, each sibling is forced to revisit the childhood tragedy that has defined their lives.

Booklist Reviews
Things are swept away by tornados in Emlyn Springs, Nebraska: pianos, houses, and a young girl and her mother. Although the young girl, Bonnie Jones, is eventually recovered, her mother, Aneira Hope Jones, never resurfaces. The painful circumstances surrounding their mother s death leave the Jones children, Larken, Gaelen, and Bonnie (henceforth christened Flying Girl), emotionally stunted and struggling to learn how to love. Years later, when another natural disaster draws them together, the three are confronted by the clouded past that has haunted them since childhood. In multiple ways, it is the community members of Emlyn Springs who teach these motherless children how to love again. Sing Them Home ushers us into small-town life, with all its distinctive cultural nuances, eccentric personalities, and homegrown secrets. With the same beauty and lyricism of her first novel, Broken for You (2004), Kallos stitches together a colorful patchwork of memories and images, creating a rich narrative fabric that develops and changes as it passes through each character s hands. Copyright Booklist Reviews 2008.

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Making toast - Roger Rosenblatt

Making toast - Rosenblatt, Roger

Summary: Describes how, after their adult daughter's sudden death, the author and his wife moved in with their son-in-law and three grandchildren, quickly becoming reaccustomed to the world of small children and helping the family grieve and get on with life. - (Baker & Taylor)



Booklist Reviews
When their daughter, Amy, died, Rosenblatt and his wife virtually moved in with their son-in-law and three grandchildren, all trying valiantly to cope with the death of a loving young woman and doctor felled by an asymptomatic heart condition. The Rosenblatts plunged themselves into the lives of Harris, six-year-old Jessica, four-year-old Sammy, and one-year-old James, shopping, cooking, shuttling, and tending to broken hearts, including their own. Essayist, author, and playwright Rosenblatt, as grandfather Boppo, is tender and amusing as he recalls simple moments in the life of his daughter. His wife, Ginny, a former schoolteacher, essentially leads Amy's life in her absence, congregating with the mothers at the children's school activities and outings. Blindsided by Amy's death, they are all fragile in their concerns for other family members; tardiness or a choking fit become occasions for worry. Friends who have lost children commiserate on the unbearable loss. Sensitive without being sentimental, Rosenblatt eases any potential discomfort on the reader's part at this invitation to view one family's efforts to cope with loss. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews

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