Grief Science

These stories wrestle with the experience of loss—of loved ones, of relationships, of a sense of self, of health—and forge a path to hope as characters fight their way forward. From bestsellers and SPFBO finalists to rising voices, 13 exceptionally talented authors explore the many facets of grief and healing through the lens of fantasy and sci-fi.

Austen Years is a deeply felt and sensitive examination of a writer’s relationship to reading, and to her own family, winding together memoir, criticism, and biographical and historical material about Austen herself. And like the sequence of Austen’s novels, the scope of Austen Years widens successively, with each chapter following one of Austen's novels. We begin with Cohen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she raises her small children and contemplates her father’s last letter.

With only a few dollars to her name and her beloved dog Copper by her side, Selena flees her past in the city to claim her late aunt’s house in the desert town of Quartz Creek. The scorpions and spiders are better than what she left behind. Because in Quartz Creek, there’s a strange beauty to everything, from the landscape to new friends, and more blue sky than Selena’s ever seen. But something lurks beneath the surface. Like the desert gods and spirits lingering outside Selena’s house at night, keeping watch.

Charles Shilling is about to begin his day with a funeral… and it will only get worse from there. What seems like a harmless little investigation turns dark fast, and Shilling is in no state to hold back the tide of cruelty coming his way. Worse, with the rate he’s falling for Florin, he’s never been so vulnerable to revenge…

Failed father, failed husband, and failed scholar, Charles Hayden hopes to put his life back together with a new project: a biography of Caedmon Hollow, the long-dead author of a legendary Victorian children’s book, In the Night Wood, and forebear of his wife, Erin. Deep in mourning from the loss of their young daughter, they pack up their American lives, Erin gives up her legal practice, and the couple settles in Hollow’s remote Yorkshire mansion.

On a Sunday in May 2008, an F5 tornado hit the town of Parkersburg, Iowa, killing eight people and destroying 250 homes and businesses within a span of 34 seconds. The next day, Parkersburg's beloved football coach, Ed Thomas, made a stunning prediction: "God willing, we will play our first home game here on this field this season."

Married professors David and Michelle Abrams are on their way home from a party at the university where they worked. It was a rainy night, and they were arguing about a secret Michelle had kept from David about being pregnant with twins. A car accident ensues, and David is pronounced DOA at the hospital. As Michelle struggles to continue life without David, she realizes that David also had secrets he never told Michelle. As she works to unravel his secrets, she learns that the twins are a missing link in the next giant leap in human evolution. Between an insane mother-in-law and evolution ...

At the age of 60, Cory Taylor is dying of melanoma-related brain cancer. Her illness is no longer treatable: She now weighs less than her neighbor's retriever. As her body weakens, she describes the experience - the vulnerability and strength, the courage and humility, the anger and acceptance - of knowing she will soon die. Written in the space of a few weeks, in a tremendous creative surge, this powerful and beautiful memoir is a clear-eyed account of what dying teaches.

Eco-distress is real. How to Live in a Chaotic Climate is here to help you rediscover meaning, joy, and connection as the tumult around us increases. Based on the Good Grief Network’s acclaimed 10 Steps to Resilience and Empowerment in a Chaotic Climate program, this book unpacks the social, political, and spiritual nuances of the climate emergency, step by step.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, an occasion that is sure to be observed around the world. But among the memorials, political speeches, and news editorials, the most pressing consideration - and often the most overlooked - is the lives and well-being of the 9/11 first responders, their families, and the victims' families over the past decade. Dennis Smith, a former firefighter and the author of the bestselling Report from Ground Zero, addresses this important topic in a series of interviews....

It's never too late to do the impossible. Meet Ida Keeling, a 104-year-old mother, activist, and world record-holding runner. Her fierce independence and deep faith carried her through the Depression and the civil rights movement--but her greatest trials were yet to come.

Memory Signal By Caleb James In the frozen ruins of the last lighthouse on Earth, one man discovers a signal that doesn’t speak in words—it speaks in memories. Silas Ward is the final keeper of Nordhavn Light, a forgotten outpost on the edge of the world. Isolated for over a thousand days after the Collapse, he endures storms, silence, and the haunting lullaby of a daughter lost. But when a mysterious aurora begins pulsing in harmony with an old reel-to-reel recorder, Silas realizes he’s not alone. The signal is alive—and it remembers. Joined by Rhea Ainsley, a crash-landed stranger...

Of the many critical conversations we will all have throughout our lifetime, few are as important as the ones discussing death—yet few of these conversations are actually happening. Let's Talk About Death (over Dinner) offers keen, practical advice on how to have these conversations—not just at the dinner table, but anywhere. There's no one right way to talk about death, but Hebb shares time- and dinner-tested prompts to use as conversation starters, ranging from the spiritual to the practical, from analytical to downright funny and surprising.

In an effort to make sense of the deaths in quick succession of several loved ones, Kathleen Dean Moore turned to the comfort of the wild, making a series of solitary excursions into ancient forests, wild rivers, remote deserts, and windswept islands to learn what the environment could teach her in her time of pain. This audiobook is the record of her experiences.

The outbreak tore the US in two. The East remains a safe haven. The West has become a ravaged wilderness, known by survivors as the Evacuated States. It is here that Henry Marco makes his living. Hired by grieving relatives, he tracks down the dead and delivers peace. Now Homeland Security wants Marco for a mission unlike any other: He must return to California, where the apocalypse began. Where a secret is hidden. And where his own tragic past waits to punish him again.

At a time when we mourn public figures and national tragedies with hashtags, where intimate posts about loss go viral and we receive automated birthday reminders for dead friends, it's clear we are navigating new terrain without a road map. Let's face it: Most of us have always had a difficult time talking about death and sharing our grief. We're awkward and uncertain; we avoid, ignore, or even deny feelings of sadness; we offer platitudes; we send sympathy bouquets whittled out of fruit.

What if everything you loved was just a simulation—and you chose to believe in it anyway? In the near future, after the Singularity has blurred the line between human and machine, Josiah Kim lives the perfect life: a loving wife, a brilliant daughter, a home in paradise. Until one morning, everything shatters—and he’s left with nothing but grief and a mysterious device that lets him see them again. Crafted from memory, code, and haunting precision, Prompt Theory is a mind-bending journey through loss, love, and the ethics of artificial resurrection. As Josiah grapples with reality, ...

Celehar's life as the Witness for the Dead of Amalo grows less isolated as his circle of friends grows larger. He has been given an apprentice to teach, and he has stumbled over a scandal of the city—the foundling girls. Orphans with no family to claim them and no funds to buy an apprenticeship. Foundling boys go to the Prelacies; foundling girls are sold into service, or worse. At once touching and shattering, Celehar's witnessing for one of these girls will lead him into the depths of his own losses. The love of his friends will lead him out again.

Natural, legal, and innovative after-death care options are transforming the paradigm of the existing funeral industry, helping families and communities recover their instinctive capacity to care for a loved one after death. Reimagining Death offers stories and guidance for home funeral vigils, advance after-death care directives, green burials, and conscious dying. When we bring art and beauty, meaningful ritual, and joy to ease our loss and sorrow, we are greening the gateway of death and returning home to ourselves, to the wisdom of our bodies, and to the earth.

These three ‘Consolations', written by Seneca to his mother and two friends, have been described as ‘the crowning achievement in the canon of ‘consolation letters'. But sentimental they are not, for they emerge from the writer's deep-seated commitment to Stoicism, where individuals are exhorted to inhabit qualities of virtue, positivity, resilience, and indifference. This recording opens with Seneca's consolatory letter to Marcia, who, after three years, was still mourning the death of her son.