death and burial

"One summer day, nine-year-old Keira Ball was in a terrible car accident and suffered catastrophic brain injuries. As the rest of her body began to shut down, her heart continued to beat. In an act of extraordinary generosity, Keira's parents and siblings immediately agreed that she would have wanted to be an organ donor. Meanwhile nine-year-old Max Johnson had been in a hospital for nearly a year, valiantly fighting the virus that was causing his young heart to fail. When Max's parents received the call they had been hoping for, they knew it came at a terrible cost to another family-in what Clarke calls "the brutal arithmetic of transplant surgery." The act of Keira's heart resuming its rhythm inside Max's body was a medical miracle. But this was only part of the story. While waiting on the transplant list, Max had become the hopeful face of a campaign to change the UK's laws around organ donation. Following his successful surgery, Keira's mother saw the little boy beaming on the front page of the newspaper and knew it was the same boy whose parents had recently sent her an anonymous letter overflowing with gratitude for her daughter's heart. The two mothers began to exchange messages and eventually decided to meet"--Provided by publisher.

"The 1922 discovery of King Tut's tomb is one of the most important ancient Egyptian finds in history. People have told stories about it ever since. Are there rooms in King Tut's tomb yet to be discovered? Did clues point to King Tut being murdered? Read the stories. Then see if you can separate the truths from the myths!"--Provided by publisher.

"From New York Times bestselling author Hampton Sides, an epic account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook's death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this day On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed in a conflict with native Hawaiians. How did Cook, who was unique among captains for his respect for Indigenous peoples and cultures, come to that fatal moment? Hampton Sides' bravura account of Cook's last journey both wrestles with Cook's legacy and provides a thrilling narrative of the titanic efforts and continual danger that characterized exploration in the 1700s. Cook was renowned for his peerless seamanship, his humane leadership, and his dedication to science -the famed naturalist Joseph Banks accompanied him on his first voyage, and Cook has been called one of the most important figures of the Age of Enlightenment. He was also deeply interested in the native people he encountered. In fact, his stated mission was to return a Tahitian man, Mai, who had become the toast of London, to his home islands. On previous expeditions, Cook mapped huge swaths of the Pacific, including the east coast of Australia, and initiated first European contact with numerous peoples. He treated his crew well, and endeavored to learn about the societies he encountered with curiosity and without judgment. Yet something was different on this last voyage. Cook became mercurial, resorting to the lash to enforce discipline, and led his two vessels into danger time and again. Uncharacteristically, he ordered violent retaliation for perceived theft on the part of native peoples. This may have had something to do with his secret orders, which were to chart and claim lands before Britain's imperial rivals could, and to discover the fabled Northwest Passage. Whatever Cook's intentions, his scientific efforts were the sharp edge of the colonial sword, and the ultimate effects of first contact were catastrophic for Indigenous people around the world. The tensions between Cook's overt and covert missions came to a head on the shores of Hawaii. His first landing there was harmonious, but when Cook returned after mapping the coast of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, his exploitative treatment of the Hawaiians led to the fatal encounter. At once a ferociously-paced story of adventure on the high seas and a searching examination of the complexities and consequences of the Age of Exploration, THE WIDE WIDE SEA is a major work from one of our finest narrative nonfiction writers"--.

Lu Spinney's memoir Beyond the High Blue Air is at once a portrait of the fearlessness of familial love and the profound dilemma posed by modern medicine. When Spinney's twenty-nine-year-old son, Miles, flies up on his snowboard, "he knows he is not in control as he is taken by force up the ramp," writes his mother, "skewing sideways as his board clips the edge and then he is hurtling, spinning up, up into the free blue sky ahead . . ." He lands hard on the ice and falls into a coma. Thus begins the erratic loss--Miles first in a coma and then trapped in a fluctuating state of minimal consciousness--that unravels over the next five years. Spinney, her husband, and three other children put their lives on hold to tend to Miles at various hospitals and finally in a care home. They hold out hope that he will be returned to them. With blunt precision, Spinney chronicles her family's intimate experience.

Describes how Russ Faria was wrongfully prosecuted and convicted for his wifes 2011 murder, despite having an alibi supported by surveillance video, receipts, and friends testimony and that her friend, Pamela Hupp, had recently replaced him as her insurance beneficiary.

"Joshua Rubenstein's riveting account takes us back to the second half of 1952 when no one could foresee an end to Joseph Stalin's murderous regime. He was poised to challenge the newly elected U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower with armed force, and was also broadening a vicious campaign against Soviet Jews. Stalin's sudden collapse and death in March 1953 was as dramatic and mysterious as his life. It is no overstatement to say that his passing marked a major turning point in the twentieth century. The Last Days of Stalin is an engaging, briskly told account of the dictator's final active months, the vigil at his deathbed, and the unfolding of Soviet and international events in the months after his death. Rubenstein throws fresh light on: the devious plotting of Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev, and other 'comrades in arms' who well understood the significance of the dictator's impending death; the witness-documented events of his death as compared to official published versions; Stalin's rumored plans to forcibly exile Soviet Jews; the responses of Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles to the Kremlin's conciliatory gestures after Stalin's death; and the momentous repercussions when Stalin's regime of terror was cut short"--.

Computer science professor Randy Pausch, who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, discusses how to overcome obstacles in one's life and achieve one's dreams.

"Percy Fawcett was a mapmaker and an adventurer. In the early 1900s, he spent years mapping out the jungles of South America. Fawcett became obsessed with the idea of a lost city of gold hidden deep in the jungle. At the age of 57, Fawcett, his 21-year-old son Jack, and Jack's friend Raleigh Rimell left on a quest to find the Lost City of Z. The three men were never heard from again. Untangle the clues they left behind"--Provided by publisher.

The author examines information from a variety of sources to uncover what really caused the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, JFK, Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, and Princess Diana.

"A . . . biography of Edgar Allan Poe that examines the renowned author's life through the prism of his mysterious death and its many possible causes. . . Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849, at just forty, in a painful, utterly bizarre manner that would not have been out of place in one of his own tales of terror. What was the cause of his untimely death, and what happened to him during the three missing days before he was found, delirious and 'in great distress' on the streets of Baltimore, wearing ill-fitting clothes that were not his own? . . . Over the years, there has been a staggering amount of speculation about the cause of death, from rabies and syphilis to suicide, alcoholism, and even murder. But many of these theories are formed on the basis of the caricature we have come to associate with Poe . . . By debunking the myths of how he lived, we come closer to understanding the real Poe-and uncovering the truth behind his mysterious death, as a new theory emerges that could prove the cause of Poe's death was haunting him all his life"--Provided by publisher.