Counted Corpse

The truth shall set her free, but not if someone wants her dead first. Business has been good for historian Paisley Sutton, but when she goes into her own church parish house to salvage some of the early 20th century fixtures before the building is demolished, she uncovers far more than vintage cabinets. Once the women from church hear about the secrets Paisley is uncovering, they are bound and determined to reveal the truth and unmask a murderer in the process. Will Paisley and her friends uncover the truth before the cover-up kills them all?

Throughout the centuries, different cultures have established a variety of procedures for handling and disposing of corpses. Often the methods are directly associated with the deceased's position in life, such as a pharaoh's mummification in Egypt or the cremation of a Buddhist. Treatment by the living of the dead over time and across cultures is the focus of study. Burial arrangements and preparations are detailed, including embalming, the funeral service, storage and transport of the body, and forms of burial. Autopsies and the investigative process of causes of deliberate death are fully covered. Preservation techniques such as cryonic suspension and mummification are discussed, as well as a look at the recycling of the corpse through organ donation, donation to medicine, animal scavengers, cannibalism, and, of course, natural decay and decomposition. Mistreatments of a corpse are also covered.

Books of Fate and Popular Culture in Early China is a comprehensive introduction to the manuscripts known as daybooks, examples of which have been found in Warring States, Qin, and Han tombs (453 BCE–220 CE). Their main content concerns hemerology, or “knowledge of good and bad days.” Daybooks reveal the place of hemerology in daily life and are invaluable sources for the study of popular culture. Eleven scholars have contributed chapters examining the daybooks from different perspectives, detailing their significance as manuscript-objects intended for everyday use and showing their connection to almanacs still popular in Chinese communities today as well as to hemerological literature in medieval Europe and ancient Babylon. Contributors include: Marianne Bujard, László Sándor Chardonnens, Christopher Cullen, Donald Harper, Marc Kalinowski, Li Ling, Liu Lexian, Alasdair Livingstone, Richard Smith, Alain Thote, and Yan Changgui.

Follow Allie Nighthawk to exciting New Orleans where she raises the dead, puts down rotters, and dabbles in the mystical world of hoodoo. She’s on the trail of an evil necromancer who will stop at nothing to rule the world with his army of deadheads. Is her magick strong enough to save the day? Or will this necromancer from her past kill her before she gets the chance? She figures she’s got a fifty-fifty shot. Make that forty-sixty.

The promise of old printer’s trays has her heart aflutter, but it nearly stops when she finds a body at the bottom of the elevator shaft. When salvage expert and historian Paisley Sutton heard that a 19th century printing press was still in the old warehouse that was scheduled for demolition, she knew she had to get in there. But when her dreams of a salvage windfall lead her on the genealogical hunt for the owners of the press and their descendants, she uncovers a story that promises to stay with her far longer than the income from her salvage operations. When the story becomes public, will Paisley’s business be safe? Will she?

The ninth volume of this edition, translation, and commentary of the Jerusalem Talmud contains two Tractates. The first Tractate, “Documents”, treats divorce law and principles of agency when written documents are required. Collateral topics are the rules for documents of manumission, those for sealed documents whose contents may be hidden from witnesses, the rules by which the divorced wife can collect the moneys due her, the requirement that both divorcer and divorcee be of sound mind, and the rules of conditional divorce. The second Tractate, “Nazirites”, describes the Nasirean vow and is the main rabbinic source about the impurity of the dead. As in all volumes of this edition, a (Sephardic rabbinic) vocalized text is presented, with parallel texts used as source of variant readings. A new translation is accompanied by an extensive commentary explaining the rabbinic background of all statements and noting Talmudic and related parallels. Attention is drawn to the extensive Babylonization of the Giṭṭin text compared to genizah texts.

Old Douglas Fir timbers bring good money, but maybe not as much as keeping quiet about the story of a murder. Paisley Sutton hates to see an old barn falling down, so when she has a chance to take in a crew of friends to salvage timbers, she goes in with gusto. But when they find the bones from a decades-old murder, Paisley begins to wonder if maybe some things should just be let go to ruins. Maybe some secrets need to stay buried. If Paisley decides to salvage more than just wood and reveal the murderer, will she be the next body buried in a barn?

Snow days aren't supposed to end with dead bodies. Harvey Beckett has just finished a quiet meal after shoveling the sidewalks around Main Street when the body of the new bartender in town is discovered behind the bar. When Harvey begins to look into the victim's pseudonym, she finds out far more than she bargained, enough to put her in real danger. Can she and her friends find the murderer before they become victims themselves?