"After my son Kyle Ferriera van Leer declared his major in Egyptology at Yale in 2010, he mentioned the Book of Two Ways in passing. Without knowing a thing about it, I said, "That's a great title for a novel." It was only after he began to explain what it actually was that I realized what I needed to write about - the construct of time, and love, and life, and death"-- Dawn Edelstein is on a plane when she is told to prepare for a crash landing....

Shares the author's experiences of working with the elderly and the story of a unique nursing-home cat whose uncanny, apparently precognitive vigils at the sides of residents who are about to die has enabled staffers to administer patient care and notice to loved ones.

Journalist Matt, his vibrant wife Nicole and their two young daughters, have their lives upended by Nicole's heartbreaking diagnosis of terminal cancer. As Matt's responsibilities as caretaker and parent become increasingly overwhelming, the couple's best friend Dane Faucheux offers to come and help out. As Dane puts his life on hold to stay with his friends, the impact of this life-altering decision proves greater and more profound than anyone could...

The only amnesia patient in a Massachusetts advanced-care cancer ward for young people, Barney has only one memory, that of himself behind the wheel of a red sports car he's sure he's never driven. With help from psychiatrist Maria Harriman and his first love, Cassie, Barney strives to reconnect with the past.

A palliative care doctor on the front lines of hospital care illuminates one of the most important and controversial ethical issues of our time on his quest to transform care through the end of life. It is harder to die in this country than ever before. Statistics show that the vast majority of Americans would prefer to die at home, yet many of us spend our last days fearful and in pain in a healthcare system ruled by high-tech procedures and a philosophy...

"At my job, people die," writes Theresa Brown, capturing both the burden and the singular importance of her profession. Brown, a former English professor, chronicles her first year as an R.N. in medical oncology. She illuminates the unique role of nurses in health care, giving us a moving portrait of the day-to-day work nurses do: caring for the person who is ill, not just the illness itself. Brown takes us with her as she struggles to tend to her...

"There is no more universal truth in life than death. No matter who you are, it is certain that one day you will die, but the mechanics and understanding of that experience will differ greatly in today's modern age. Dr. Haider Warraich is a young and brilliant new voice in the conversation about death and dying started by Dr. Sherwin Nuland's classic How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter, and Atul Gawande's recent sensation, Being Mortal:...

Up to the 1970s, most Americans died swiftly: of heart attacks, strokes, cancer, or in accidents. But in the past three decades, medical advances have extended our lives and changed the way we die. Journalist Kiernan reveals the disconnect between how patients want to live the end of life--pain-free, functioning mentally and physically, surrounded by family and friends--and how the medical system continues to treat the dying--with extreme interventions,...