A comforting bereavement gift book, consisting of a short sermon from Canon Henry Scott Holland.

From the author of the classic multimillion bestseller The Shell Seeker, comes Rosamunde Pilcher's September, a story of homecomings and heartbreaks, friendships, betrayals, forgiveness, and love. The basis for the TV mini-series of the same name, now available on streaming platforms. A place you will never forget Rosamunde Pilcher's Scotland...where the fields flourish with greenery, the bills bloom with purple, and the lochs glitter with the bright blue of the sky. A time you will never forget September...when the heather is in full flower, the first chill of autumn cools the air, and the countryside stirs with the hunt, balls, dinner parties, and dance. A novel you will never forget A main selection of the Literary Guild and the Doubleday Book Club

The bestselling poet Malcolm Guite chooses forty poems from across the centuries that express the universal experience of loss and reflects on them in order to draw out the comfort, understanding and hope they offer. Some of the poems will be familiar, many will be new, but together they provide a sure companion for the journey across difficult terrain. Some of Malcolm’s own poetry is included, written out of his work as a priest with the dying and the bereaved and giving to the volume a powerful authenticity. The choice of forty poems is significant and reflects an ancient practice still observed in some European and Middle Eastern societies of taking extra-special care of a bereaved person in the forty days following a death – our word quarantine come from this. They explore the nature and the risk of love, the pain of letting go and look toward glimpses of resurrection.

When John Thaw, star of The Sweeney and Inspector Morse, died from cancer in 2002, a nation lost one of its finest actors and Sheila Hancock lost a beloved husband. In this unique double biography she chronicles their lives - personal and professional, together and apart. John Thaw was born in Manchester, the son of a lorry driver. When he arrived at RADA on a scholarship he felt an outsider. In fact his timing was perfect: it was the sixties and television was beginning to make its mark. With his roles in Z-Cars and The Sweeney, fame came quickly. But it was John's role as Morse that made him an icon. In 1974 he married Sheila Hancock, with whom he shared a working-class background and a RADA education. Sheila was already the star of the TV series The Rag Trade and went on to become the first woman artistic director at the RSC. Theirs was a sometimes turbulent, always passionate relationship, and in this remarkable book Sheila describes their love - weathering overwork and the pressures of celebrity, drink and cancer - with honesty and piercing intelligence, and evokes two lives lived to the utmost.

Offering inspiration to all, one man's philosophy of life and truth, considered one of the classics of our time.

An updated, repackaged edition of the bestselling divination tool and party favorite - ask a yes or no question, open the book, find your answer - with more than a million copies in print. Should you ask your boss for a raise? Call that cutie you met at a party? Sell your Google stock? Tell your best friend her boyfriend's cheating? The answer to these questions (and hundreds of others) is in this fun and weirdly wise little book that's impossible to put down. It's simple to use: just hold it closed in your hands and concentrate on your question for a few seconds. While visualizing or speaking your question, place one palm down on the book's front and stroke the edge of the pages back to front. When you sense the time is right, open to the page your fingers landed on and there is your answer! Fun, satisfying, and a lot less time-consuming than asking everyone you know for advice. Over 1 million copies in print!

"A wonderful introduction the Japanese tradition of jisei, this volume is crammed with exquisite, spontaneous verse and pithy, often hilarious, descriptions of the eccentric and committed monastics who wrote the poems." --Tricycle: The Buddhist Review Although the consciousness of death is, in most cultures, very much a part of life, this is perhaps nowhere more true than in Japan, where the approach of death has given rise to a centuries-old tradition of writing jisei, or the "death poem." Such a poem is often written in the very last moments of the poet's life. Hundreds of Japanese death poems, many with a commentary describing the circumstances of the poet's death, have been translated into English here, the vast majority of them for the first time. Yoel Hoffmann explores the attitudes and customs surrounding death in historical and present-day Japan and gives examples of how these have been reflected in the nation's literature in general. The development of writing jisei is then examined--from the longing poems of the early nobility and the more "masculine" verses of the samurai to the satirical death poems of later centuries. Zen Buddhist ideas about death are also described as a preface to the collection of Chinese death poems by Zen monks that are also included. Finally, the last section contains three hundred twenty haiku, some of which have never been assembled before, in English translation and romanized in Japanese.