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. It's just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. Set during World War II in Germany, Markus...

Patrick Lanigan was once a well-liked, well-paid young partner in a thriving Mississippi law firm. Then he stole ninety million dollars from his own firm and ran for his life. For four years, he's evaded powerful men. Then, inevitably, they tracked him down at the edge of a Brazilian jungle. Patrick is coming home to the Mississippi city where it all began. As the trial begins, Patrick's former partners wait for their revenge. But another story is...

Mattie Ross is just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shoots her father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robs him of his life, his horse, and $150 in cash money. Mattie leaves home to avenge her father's blood. With the one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, the meanest available U.S. Marshal, by her side, Mattie pursues the homicide into Indian Territory.

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot....

Ehrenreich's core philosophy holds that aging people have the right to determine their quality of life and may choose to forgo painful and generally ineffective treatments. She presents evidence that such tests as annual physicals and Pap smears have little effect in prolonging life; investigates wellness trends, including mindfulness meditation; and questions the doctrine of a harmonious "mindbody" and its supposed natural tendency to prolong life....

From interviews with a Hiroshima survivor, AIDS caseworker, death-row parolee, police, firefighters, emergency health workers, doctors, nurses, writers, undertakers, clergy, etc., etc.

Dual perspectives reveal the aftermath of seventeen-year-old Michael MacKenzie's birthday celebration during which he discharges an antique Winchester rifle and unknowingly kills the father of high school classmate Jenna Ward.

What if you could spend one more day with a lost loved one? Charley Benetto chose to live with his father when his parents divorced. He returns to his hometown decades later when his life is falling apart and finds his mother, who died eight years earlier still living there.