The Face in the Bessledorf Funeral Parlor

The Face in the Bessledorf Funeral Parlor PDF Author: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 9780689318023
Category : Death
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Did undertakers Joe and Moe murder the crooked vice president, who absconded with his company's retirement money, so that they could finance their new drive-in viewing window? Or is the VP hiding next door? Once again, Bernie Magruder proves that a first-class bumbler can also be a first-class detective.

The Face in the Bessledorf Funeral Parlor

The Face in the Bessledorf Funeral Parlor PDF Author: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 9780689318023
Category : Death
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Did undertakers Joe and Moe murder the crooked vice president, who absconded with his company's retirement money, so that they could finance their new drive-in viewing window? Or is the VP hiding next door? Once again, Bernie Magruder proves that a first-class bumbler can also be a first-class detective.

Tales from Kentucky Funeral Homes

Tales from Kentucky Funeral Homes PDF Author: William Lynwood Montell
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813173612
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
In Tales from Kentucky Funeral Homes, William Lynwood Montell has collected stories and reminiscences from funeral home directors and embalmers across the state. These accounts provide a record of the business of death as it has been practiced in Kentucky over the past fifty years. The collection ranges from tales of old-time burial practices, to stories about funeral customs unique to the African American community, to tales of premonitions, mistakes, and even humorous occurrences. Other stories involve such unusual aspects of the business as snake-handling funerals, mistaken identities, and in-home embalming. Taken together, these firsthand narratives preserve an important aspect of Kentucky social life not likely to be collected elsewhere. Most of these funeral home stories involve the recent history of Kentucky funeral practices, but some descriptive accounts go back to the era when funeral directors used horse-drawn wagons to reach secluded areas. These accounts, including stories about fainting relatives, long-winded preachers, and pallbearers falling into graves, provide significant insights into the pivotal role morticians have played in local life and culture over the years.

Mortuary Confidential

Mortuary Confidential PDF Author: Kenneth McKenzie
Publisher: Kensington Books
ISBN: 0806531797
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
From rookie mistakes and runaway corpses to screaming dead men and unusual requests, a collection of stories by funeral directors.

Confessions of a Funeral Director

Confessions of a Funeral Director PDF Author: Caleb Wilde
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062465260
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
“Wise, vulnerable, and surprisingly relatable . . . funny in all the right places and enormously helpful throughout. It will change how you think about death.” —Rachel Held Evans, New York Times–bestselling author of Searching for Sunday We are a people who deeply fear death. While humans are biologically wired to evade death for as long as possible, we have become too adept at hiding from it, vilifying it, and—when it can be avoided no longer—letting the professionals take over. Sixth-generation funeral director Caleb Wilde understands this reticence and fear. He had planned to get as far away from the family business as possible. He wanted to make a difference in the world, and how could he do that if all the people he worked with were . . . dead? Slowly, he discovered that caring for the deceased and their loved ones was making a difference—in other people’s lives to be sure, but it also seemed to be saving his own. A spirituality of death began to emerge as he observed the family who lovingly dressed their deceased father for his burial; the nursing home that honored a woman’s life by standing in procession as her body was taken away; the funeral that united a conflicted community. Through stories like these, told with equal parts humor and poignancy, Wilde’s candid memoir offers an intimate look into the business of death and a new perspective on living and dying. “Open[s] up conversations about life’s ultimate concerns.” —The Washington Post “As a look behind the closed doors of the death industry, as well as a candid exploration of Wilde’s own faith journey, this book is fascinating and compelling.” —National Catholic Reporter “[A] stunner of a debut.” —Rachel Held Evans, author of Inspired

Hugh Hefner's First Funeral and Other True Tales of Love and Death in Chicago

Hugh Hefner's First Funeral and Other True Tales of Love and Death in Chicago PDF Author: Pat Colander
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780996608114
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Pat Colander was a writer for The Reader and The Chicago Tribune in the 1970s and 1980s, and covered some of the most offbeat stories during that time. Seven of those tales of love and death in Chicago are featured in this incredible book.Featuring a beautiful cover photograph from Barry Butler and memorable illustrations from artist Dave Mosele, Hugh Hefner's First Funeral and other True Tales of Love and Death in Chicago is a gritty trip into Chicago's past. Before the last page is devoured, the reader will track the Tylenol killer(s), get inside the mind of a tortured artist, meet the woman behind the women at Playboy Magazine, follow along with a shocking murder trial, spend time with a legendary Chicago attorney, and tour the old Cook County morgue.Hugh Hefner's First Funeral and other True Tales of Love and Death in Chicago is shocking, gruesome, and gritty, and will remain in your heart and mind long after you finish reading the final page.

Nine Years Under

Nine Years Under PDF Author: Sheri Booker
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1592407625
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
A dazzling and darkly comic memoir about coming of age in a black funeral home in Baltimore Sheri Booker was only fifteen when she started working at Wylie Funeral Home in West Baltimore. She had no idea her summer job would become nine years of immersion into a hidden world. Reeling from the death of her beloved great aunt, Sheri found comfort in the funeral home and soon had the run of the place. With AIDS and gang violence threatening to wipe out a generation of black men, Wylie was never short on business. As families came together to bury one of their own, Booker was privy to their most intimate moments of grief and despair. But along with the sadness, Booker encountered moments of dark humor: brawls between mistresses and widows, and car crashes at McDonald’s with dead bodies in tow. While she never got over her terror of the embalming room, Booker learned to expect the unexpected and to never, ever cry. Nine Years Under offers readers an unbelievable glimpse into an industry in the backdrop of all our lives.

The Undertaker's Daughter

The Undertaker's Daughter PDF Author: Kate Mayfield
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471134504
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
'On the last day of 1959 my father, the Beau Brummel of morticians, piled us into his green and white Desoto in which we looked like a moving pack of Salem cigarettes. He drove away from Lanesboro, the city in which we all were born, and into a small town on the Kentucky and Tennessee border. It was only a ninety-minute drive, but it might as well have been to Alaska. When our big boat of a car glided into Jubilee we circled the town square and headed towards the residential section of Main Street. My father pulled the car over and our five dark heads turned to face a huge, slightly run down house. My parents were total strangers to this tiny enclave, but it didn't matter because my father had finally realised his dream in this old house, which was to own his own funeral home.'

Restless in Peace

Restless in Peace PDF Author: Mariah de la Croix
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
ISBN: 0738733601
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
A deceased undertaker still carries out his life’s work. The spirit of a nun comforts mourners. Red carnations materialize from nowhere . . . Spooky Stories from the Dismal Trade Alternately hair-raising, creepy, and touching, Mariah de la Croix’s encounters with the supernatural during her tenure as a mortician are both chilling and unforgettable. Restless in Peace recounts her true experiences working in funeral homes—and the resident spirits’ frightening, bizarre, and sometimes amusing behaviors. From the angry spirit who follows her home after work to the deceased man who likes to communicate through a microphone, this book offers a rare glimpse of living and working among the spirited dead.

Mortician Diaries

Mortician Diaries PDF Author: June Knights Nadle
Publisher: New World Library
ISBN: 1577318579
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
After 50 years in the funeral business, 80-year-old grandmother-undertaker June Knights Nadle has seen it all — at least all of what goes on before, during, and after life’s ultimate challenge. In Mortician Diaries, she combines equal doses of charm, humanity, humor, and reality to tell it like it is on this taboo subject. A kind of Prairie Home Companion set in a mortuary, the book features memorable stories of regret — “I wish I had kissed him on the morning he had the accident” — and renewal, as the lesson of facing life’s last great event is learned, or not. Some of the accounts here are funny, some sad. Some are haunting in their strangeness as they reveal the many ways in which people cope. Along the way, the reader is drawn into Nadle’s own life story as an unconventional woman who devoted herself to the dead and to those they left behind.

Over Our Dead Bodies:

Over Our Dead Bodies: PDF Author: Kenneth McKenzie
Publisher: Citadel
ISBN: 0806536659
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Discover a more lighthearted side of the funeral industry in this collection of real-life stories from the authors of Mortuary Confidential. Not knowing what to do, I sat on the church steps and waited. As the gravity of my failure began to well up in me, I began to cry . . . I Had Lost The Hearse! Funerals and the all the things that accompany them are traditionally somber, contemplative events in which the bereaved look to their undertaker to guide them through that most difficult of times. Of course, sometimes tradition gets thrown under the bus. From a dysfunctional family who turn their mother’s wake into a full-blown riot, to funeral crashers looking for free meals, to a horse-drawn hearse taking the dearly departed for the ride of their afterlife, these accounts from actual undertakers will have you laughing, thinking, and gasping in disbelief. A literal graveyard of wild coincidences, slapstick humor, and touching moments, Over Our Dead Bodies explores the lighter side of the dead, the living, and the lone undertaker who must make it all go as planned—even if it doesn’t. Praise for Mortuary Confidential “Outrageous funeral stories, dipped in beauty and morbid humor.” —Caleb Wilde, author of Confessions of a Funeral Director “Curious, wildly honest stories that need to be told, but just not at the dinner table.” —Dana Kollmann, author of Never Suck a Dead Man’s Hand “As unpredictable and lively as a bunch of drunks at a New Orleans funeral.” —Joe R. Lansdale, author of Moon Lake “Sick, funny, and brilliant! I love this book.” —Jonathan Maberry, Bram Stoker Award–winning author of They Bite! And Rot & Ruin “These true mortuary tales are poignant—and suddenly, gaspi