The Dead Wifes Handbook

Rachel, Max, and their daughter Ellie had the perfect life—until the night Rachel’s heart stopped beating. She was thirty-six. Just as her family can’t forget her, Rachel can’t quite let go of them either. Caught in a place between worlds, Rachel watches helplessly as she begins to fade from their lives. This fresh debut novel touches on the various stages of bereavement, from denial to acceptance. As Max and Ellie work through their grief, Rachel too struggles to come to terms with her death. And as her husband starts to date again, Rachel realizes that one day Max will find love, and that Ellie will have a new mother figure in her life. The Dead Wife’s Handbook is a heartwarming and touching book, very commercial in its approach and a compelling read. It will touch a wide readership, and is a perfect read for fans of the bestseller The Lovely Bones. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

In the closing years of the fourteenth century, an anonymous French writer compiled a book addressed to a fifteen-year-old bride, narrated in the voice of her husband, a wealthy, aging Parisian. The book was designed to teach this young wife the moral attributes, duties, and conduct befitting a woman of her station in society, in the almost certain event of her widowhood and subsequent remarriage. The work also provides a rich assembly of practical materials for the wife's use and for her household, including treatises on gardening and shopping, tips on choosing servants, directions on the medical care of horses and the training of hawks, plus menus for elaborate feasts, and more than 380 recipes. The Good Wife's Guide is the first complete modern English translation of this important medieval text also known as Le Ménagier de Paris (the Parisian household book), a work long recognized for its unique insights into the domestic life of the bourgeoisie during the later Middle Ages. The Good Wife's Guide, expertly rendered into modern English by Gina L. Greco and Christine M. Rose, is accompanied by an informative critical introduction setting the work in its proper medieval context as a conduct manual. This edition presents the book in its entirety, as it must have existed for its earliest readers. The Guide is now a treasure for the classroom, appealing to anyone studying medieval literature or history or considering the complex lives of medieval women. It illuminates the milieu and composition process of medieval authors and will in turn fascinate cooking or horticulture enthusiasts. The work illustrates how a (perhaps fictional) Parisian householder of the late fourteenth century might well have trained his wife so that her behavior could reflect honorably on him and enhance his reputation.

With over 120,000 copies sold, this unique contemporary work brings the timeless Tibetan Bardo teaching into current American culture and language, with 49 days of readings for someone who has died or who is preparing for the dying experience. This book has been and still remains an important tool for providing a spiritual service to a dying person as opposed to grieving, processing loss, or mourning for that person's passage. Front matter includes "Notes on the Labyrinth" (or the Bardo...) and other commentary by the author that provides insights for an American reader who wishes to provide this guiding service to a family member, spouse, friend, or anyone who is terminal. The reading instructions very clearly outline when and what to read, without any limitation of belief system--the practice is presented as non-denominational, not requiring Buddhist or Christian or Jewish prayers, but also not in conflict with any of these. A schedule of readings shows graphically how to carry out the full series of 49 days of readings, at approximately 10 to 20 minutes per reading. The book has been in use since 1974 in various editions, taught in university courses on Death & Dying and related subjects (it is referenced in a recent handbook of acting exercises, for example...), and used by hospice workers and nurses internationally. The American Book of the Dead is often referenced in discussions of the 1970's West Coast spiritual renaissance, and many of the baby boomer generation will recall it in circulation when they were in college or beginning their careers. Translated editions have appeared in Spanish and Greek languages, with editions in preparation in German, French, Italian, and Polish. There is a course available by correspondence and on the internet that gives additional training for readers who wish to pursue the practice of performing "Labyrinth Readings" or "Bardo guiding" as a service to others--beyond one's own family and personal network.

From bestselling author Hannah Beckerman comes a moving story about memory, secrets, and what it really means to feel that you're one of the family. When Nell's father makes a deathbed declaration that hints at a long-held secret, it reignites feelings of isolation that have plagued her for years. Her suspicions about the family's past only deepen when her mother, Annie, who is losing her memories to dementia, starts making cryptic comments of her own. Thirty-five years earlier, Annie's life was upended by a series of traumas--one shock after another that she buried deep in her heart. The decisions she made at the time were motivated by love, but she knew even then that nobody could ever understand--let alone forgive--what she did. As the two women's stories unravel, a generation apart, Nell finally discovers the devastating truth about her mother's past, and her own. In this beautifully observed and emotionally powerful story of identity, memory and the nature of family, Hannah Beckerman asks: To what lengths would you go to protect the ones you love?

A month after proposing marriage, Diana Denholm’s husband was diagnosed with colon cancer and later congestive heart failure. Following a heart transplant several of her husband’s body systems began failing forcing Diana to become his primary caregiver for more than a decade. The Caregiving Wife’s Handbook is a step-by-step communication guide to help women maintain emotional, physical and financial health in their unique role as caregivers to their dying husbands.

"Among the broad spectrum of ancient Egyptian religious literature, the Book of the Dead is the most representative of the mortuary religion and of the magical and ritual practices belonging to it. Moreover, its rich corpus of texts and images provides unique information on the scribal practices, mortuary traditions, myths, and priestly rituals in ancient Egypt from the 2nd Millennium BCE to the Roman Period. "Book of the Dead" is the conventional name given by Egyptologists to a collection of magical compositions called in ancient Egyptian "Book for coming forth by day". This title refers to the main wish of the deceased, who wished to be able to leave his tomb and move freely between this world and the next. Each Book of the Dead manuscript is unique, although we know of the existence of workshops where the papyri were bought and therefore a few common stylistic features can be recognized according to different regional traditions of writing and manufacture. The spells also present many and various parallels with other magical and ritual texts attested in temples, on magical objects, and amulets, showing that the mortuary literature had in fact a strong link with the daily religious life and beliefs of the ancient Egyptians. This Handbook is the first guide to all the aspects and topics of research both in relation to the Book of the Dead itself and to broader research on ancient Egyptian religion and magic"--

The current state of scholarship on the book of Ezekiel, one of the three Major Prophets, is robust. Ezekiel, unlike most pre-exilic prophetic collections, contains overt clues that its primary circulation was as a literary text and not a collection of oral speeches. The author was highly educated, the theology of the book is "dim," and its view of humanity is overwhelmingly negative. In The Oxford Handbook of Ezekiel, editor Corrine Carvalho brings together scholars from a diverse range of interpretive perspectives to explore one of the Bible's most debated books. Consisting of twenty-seven essays, the Handbook provides introductions to the major trends in the scholarship of Ezekiel, covering its history, current state, and emerging directions. After an introductory overview of these trends, each essay discusses an important element in the scholarly engagement with the book. Several essays discuss the history of the text (its historical context, redactional layers, text criticism, and use of other Israelite and near eastern traditions). Others focus on key themes in the book (such as temple, priesthood, law, and politics), while still others look at the book's reception history and contextual interpretations (including art, Christian use, gender approaches, postcolonial approaches, and trauma theory). Taken together, these essays demonstrate the vibrancy of Ezekiel research in the twenty-first century.