'For fans of Maggie O'Farrell and Jojo Moyes, this is a sweeping book of love, motherhood, death and hope' STYLIST 'Wonderfully assured' THE TIMES 'Pass the tissues...' EVENING STANDARD 'Lovely novel. Highly recommend' JENNI MURRAY 'Beautifully written' THE SUN 'Prepare for heartbreak' WOMAN & HOME 'A beautiful story' LAURA PEARSON 'Brilliant' BELLA Because there's never enough time to say goodbye... Sylvia knows that she's running out of time. Very soon, she will exist only in the memories of those who loved her most and the pieces of her life she's left behind. So she begins to write her husband a handbook for when she's gone, somewhere to capture the small moments of ordinary, precious happiness in their married lives. From raising their wild, loving son, to what to give their gentle daughter on her eighteenth birthday - it's everything she should have told him before it was too late. But Sylvia also has a secret, one that she's saved until the very last pages. And it's a moment in her past that could change everything... Praise for For When I'm Gone: 'Beautifully written, with powerful messages of hope' KATHERINE WEBB 'A moving portrait of a modern family in crisis' FRANCESCA HORNAK 'Ley took my breath away. Exquisitely written and deeply effective' KATE WEINBERG 'Heart-breaking. Beautifully written. Reminded me of Maggie O'Farrell' REBECCA THORNTON 'A beautiful, sharply observed tale of motherhood, complicated women and family dynamics' CHARLOTTE PHILBY 'Heartbreaking and yet uplifting... Rebecca Ley has written a wonderful debu't JENNY QUINTANA 'Rebecca Ley explores the need for love, forgiveness and remembrance that's within us all' WOMAN'S WEEKLY

New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller! From the bestselling author of The Beauty of What Remains, a guide to writing a meaningful letter about your life. Writing an ethical will, a document that includes stories and reflections about your past, is an ancient tradition. It can include joy and regrets, and ultimately becomes both a way to remember a loved one who is gone and a primer on how to live a better, happier life. Beloved Rabbi Steve Leder has helped thousands of people to write their own ethical wills, and in this intimate book helps us write our own. Because our culture privileges the material over the spiritual, we sometimes forget that our words carry greater value than any physical thing we can bequeath to our loved ones. Rabbi Leder provides all the right questions and prompts, including: What was your most painful regret and how can your loved ones avoid repeating it? When was a time you led with your heart instead of your head? What did you learn from your biggest failure? Including examples of ethical wills from a broad range of voices—old and young, with and without children, famous and unknown—For You When I Am Gone inspires readers to examine their own lives and turn them into something beautiful and meaningful for generations to come.

An Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestseller. Dear Luke, First let me say--I love you...I didn't want to leave you... Luke Richardson has returned home after burying Natalie, his beloved wife of sixteen years, ready to face the hard job of raising their three children alone. But there's something he's not prepared for--a blue envelope with his name scrawled across the front in Natalie's handwriting, waiting for him on the floor of their suburban Michigan home. The letter inside, written on the first day of Natalie's cancer treatment a year ago, turns out to be the first of many. Luke is convinced they're genuine, but who is delivering them? As his obsession with the letters grows, Luke uncovers long-buried secrets that make him question everything he knew about his wife and their family. But the revelations also point the way toward a future where love goes on--in written words, in memories, and in the promises it's never too late to keep.

A mother's advice to her daughter--a guide to daily living, both practical and sublime--with full-color illustrations throughout. One sleepless night while she was in her early twenties, illustrator/writer Hallie Bateman had a painful realization: her mom would die, and after she died she would be gone. The prospect was devastating, and also scary--how would she navigate the world without the person who gave her life? She thought about all the motherly advice she would miss--advice that could help her through the challenges to come, including the ordeal of losing a parent. The next day, Hallie asked her mother, writer Suzy Hopkins, to record step-by-step instructions for her to follow in the event of her mom's death. The list began: "Pour yourself a stiff glass of whiskey and make some fajitas" and continued from there, walking Hallie through the days, months, and years of life after loss, with motherly guidance and support, addressing issues great and small--from choosing a life partner to baking a quiche. The project became a way for mother and daughter to connect with humor, openness, and gratitude. It led to this book. Combining Suzy's wit and heartfelt advice with Hallie's quirky and colorful style, What to Do When I'm Gone is the illustrated instruction manual for getting through life without one's mom. It's also a poignant look at loss, love, and taking things one moment at a time. By turns whimsical, funny, touching, and above all pragmatic, it will leave readers laughing and teary-eyed. And it will spur conversations that enrich family members' understanding of one another.

From the acclaimed author of We Ride Upon Sticks comes a luminous novel that moves across a windswept Mongolia, as estranged twin brothers make a journey of duty, conflict, and renewed understanding. "A dazzling achievement...The rhythms are more like prayer than prose, and the puzzlelike plot yields revelations." —The New York Times Tasked with finding the reincarnation of a great lama—a spiritual teacher who may have been born anywhere in the vast Mongolian landscape—the young monk Chuluun sets out with his identical twin, Mun, who has rejected the monastic life they once shared. Their relationship will be tested on this journey through their homeland as each possesses the ability to hear the other’s thoughts. Proving once again that she is a writer of immense range and imagination, Quan Barry carries us across a terrain as unforgiving as it is beautiful and culturally varied, from the western Altai mountains to the eerie starkness of the Gobi Desert to the ancient capital of Chinggis Khaan. As their country stretches before them, questions of faith—along with more earthly matters of love and brotherhood—haunt the twins. Are our lives our own, or do we belong to something larger? When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East is a stunningly far-flung examination of our individual struggle to retain our convictions and discover meaning in a fast-changing world, as well as a meditation on accepting what simply is.

The national bestseller From the author of the bestselling More Beautiful Than Before comes an inspiring book about loss based on his most popular sermon. As the senior rabbi of one of the largest synagogues in the world, Steve Leder has learned over and over again the many ways death teaches us how to live and love more deeply by showing us not only what is gone but also the beauty of what remains. This inspiring and comforting book takes us on a journey through the experience of loss that is fundamental to everyone. Yet even after having sat beside thousands of deathbeds, Steve Leder the rabbi was not fully prepared for the loss of his own father. It was only then that Steve Leder the son truly learned how loss makes life beautiful by giving it meaning and touching us with love that we had not felt before. Enriched by Rabbi Leder's irreverence, vulnerability, and wicked sense of humor, this heartfelt narrative is filled with laughter and tears, the wisdom of millennia and modernity, and, most of all, an unfolding of the profound and simple truth that in loss we gain more than we ever imagined.

The success of this book -- with 150,000 sold -- speaks to our aging population and an increased interest in writing wills, preparing medical care directives, preplanning funerals and making it easier for surviving family members to manage the details at the passing of loved ones. Elegantly designed and tastefully illustrated, When I'm Gone is a fill-in record book and a resource manual to record all the little details of life so that, when someone is absent, for whatever reason, those left behind can cope. The book provides a place to give instructions concerning the issues we think of first -- legal and financial -- but also all of the day-to-day details of the household and the personal notes and information we usually never get around to writing down. The book includes useful information and space to write in instructions on how to contact key people and where to locate essential documents, such as wills, powers of attorney, medical care directives and living wills. It also provides a space to jot down important information like banking details, home and car maintenance records, PINs, passwords, the location of keys, phone numbers, addresses and so much more. Important matters that can be recorded here include: Insurance, lawyers, bank, investment and pension details, deeds and mortgages Healthcare and medical records and directives Funeral arrangements and last wishes Setting up trusts and choosing guardians for children and dependant adults Care of pets Maintenance of homes and vehicles Access to digital records and operation of computers and other devices Instructions for favorite belongings. This new edition of When I'm Gone has been updated to reflect changes in laws, customs and technology over the past decade, touching on everything from digital storage of family photos to green funerals to medically assisted dying. Space has been added for writing more of your own information. Everyone wants to keep better track of their records, and author Kathleen Fraser has designed the perfect way to do so with as little effort as possible.