Discusses how family and medical personnel can aid the terminally ill.

In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending. 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,...

Describes a family's struggle to get their mother properly buried, while they encounter catastrophes of flood and fire, as well as the chaos of their own feelings.

John Grisham returns to Ford County, Mississippi, the setting of his immensely popular first novel, "A Time to Kill," with this wholly surprising collection of stories. In his first collection of short stories, John Grisham takes us back to Ford County, Mississippi, the setting of his first novel. The plot contains profanity, sexual situations, and violence.

The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.

Describes how the Black Plague of the fourteenth century affected the history of Europe and explores the plague's beneficial results.

Shares the sometimes gruesome details of the deaths of nineteen famous historical figures, including King Tut, Pocahontas, George Washington, Edgar Allan Poe, and Marie Curie.

"The death of a friend is a wrenching event for anyone at any age and can spark feelings that range from sadness to guilt to anxiety. Teenagers especially need help coping with grief and loss. This sensitive book answers questions grieving teens often have, like "How should I be acting?" "How long will this last?" and "What if I can't handle my grief on my own?" The book also addresses the complicated emotions that can accompany the death of an acquaintance,...

"Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed. Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future—age 103!—and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far...

When Quinn's young son suddenly dies, he seeks forgiveness for his shortcomings by completing one of his son's Boy Scout badges, where he forges a friendship with Ona, a 104-year-old woman.