Grief Biography

New York Times best-selling author Firoozeh Dumas is used to making people laugh, but in 2022, she found herself drowning in tears of sadness. After her 2022 Los Angeles Times article "What I needed was a rest break on the Island of Grieving and Useless Folks" went viral, she was inspired to write Sob, a one-hour audio story about grief, healing, and miracles that will leave you spellbound. In this unflinching story, Firoozeh Dumas, author of the international best seller Funny in Farsi, takes you into the worst year of her life, which she describes as “a bouillon cube of grief”.

Millions of people climb the grand marble staircase into New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art every year. But only a select few have unrestricted access to every nook and cranny. They're the guards in dark blue suits, keeping careful watch over this vast treasure house. Caught up in the early days of a glamorous journalism career, Patrick Bringley never thought he'd be one of them. Then his brother was diagnosed with fatal cancer and he needed to escape the mundane clamour of daily life. So he quit, and sought solace in the most beautiful place he knew.

When the oldest of Kate Braestrup's four children was 10 years old, her husband, a Maine state trooper, was killed in a car accident. Stunned and grieving, she decided to pursue her husband's dream of becoming a Unitarian minister. She eventually began working with the Maine Game Warden Service, which conducts the state's search-and-rescue operations when people go missing in the wilderness.

In the summer of 2002, Shannon Leone Fowler, a 28-year-old marine biologist, was backpacking with her fiancé and love of her life, Sean. Sean was a tall, blue-eyed, warmhearted Australian, and he and Shannon planned to return to Australia after their excursion to Koh Pha Ngan, Thailand. Their plans, however, were devastatingly derailed when a box jellyfish wrapped around Sean's leg, stinging and killing him in a matter of minutes as Shannon helplessly watched.

In Just Show Up, Kara and her close friend, Jill Lynn Buteyn, write about what friendship looks like in the midst of changing life seasons, loads of laundry, and even cancer. Whether you are eager to be present to someone going through a difficult time or simply want inspiration for pursuing friends in a new way, this eloquent and practical audiobook explores the gift of silence, the art of receiving, and what it means to just show up.

Like the biblical Job, John Ramsey had it all - wealth, social position, a loving family. And like Job, Ramsey was destined for great affliction, as many of the most precious things in his life were cruelly taken from him.

On a summer day in New York, Jonathan Santlofer discovers his wife, Joy, gasping for breath on their living room couch. After a frenzied 911 call, an ambulance races across Manhattan, and after hours pacing in a hospital waiting room, a doctor finally delivers the fateful news. Consumed by grief, Jonathan desperately tries to pursue life as he always had - writing, social engagements, and working on his art - but finds it nearly impossible to admit his deep feelings of loss to anyone, not even his to beloved daughter, Doria, or to himself. Includes a Bonus PDF of author drawings.

A chilling behind-bars encounter with a killer unfolds. Step into the heart-wrenching world of his victim’s grieving mother. Can the unforgivable be forgiven? As Tammy Horvath grapples with the weight of depression following her profound loss, she discovers that no amount of exercise or travel can completely mend her shattered soul. The quest for genuine healing takes a courageous turn as she confronts the murderer, unraveling the haunting mysteries behind Luke’s tragic death.

William Peter Blatty, the best-selling author and Oscar Award-winning screenwriter of The Exorcist, lived a charmed life among the elite stars of Hollywood. His son, Peter, born over a decade after The Exorcist, grew from an apple-cheeked boy into an "imposing young man with a quick, warm smile". But when Peter died very suddenly from a rare disorder, Blatty's world turned upside down.

Liz Hauck and her dad had a plan to start a weekly cooking program in a residential home for teenage boys in state care, which was run by the human services agency he co-directed. When her father died before they had a chance to get the project started, Liz decided she would try it without him. She didn’t know what to expect from volunteering with court-involved youth, but as a high school teacher she knew that teenagers are drawn to food-related activities. This is the story of what happened around the table, and how one dinner became one hundred dinners.

Alle wollen alt werden, niemand will alt sein. Der Widerspruch ist absurd, das Leiden daran real. Wie lernen wir, so gut wie möglich damit zurechtzukommen? Geht das, alt werden und ein erfülltes Leben führen? Mit ihren über 80 Jahren hat sich Elke Heidenreich mit dem Altwerden beschäftigt. Herausgekommen ist dabei ein Buch, wie nur sie es schreiben kann. Persönlich, ehrlich, doch nie gnadenlos, mit einem Wort: lebensklug. Sie denkt über ihr eigenes Leben nach, und das heißt vor allem, über ihre Beziehungen zu anderen Menschen. Im Alter trägt man die Konsequenzen für alles, was man getan hat.

Dallas Willard spent his life making eternal living concrete for his friends. After his unexpected passing in 2013, the kaleidoscope of memories and the diversity of the lives he had touched could not be confined to one or even two memorial services but three. It is this wide breadth of impact that inspired friends, family, colleagues, students, and leaders of the church to gather their reflections on this celebrated yet humble theologian and philosopher.

Death is not for the faint of heart, and sometimes the best way to cope is through humor. No one knows this better than comedian Laurie Kilmartin. She made headlines by live-tweeting her father's time in hospice and her grieving process after he passed and channeled her experience into a comedy special, 45 Jokes About My Dead Dad. Dead People Suck is her hilarious guide to surviving (sometimes) death, dying, and grief without losing your mind.

Before May 31, 2008, September Vaudrey's life was beautiful. But on that day, with one phone call from the ER, her whole world - everything she knew and believed - was shaken to the core. Katie, her 19-year-old artist daughter, had been in a car accident and would not survive. How does a family live in the wake of devastating tragedy? When darkness colors every moment, is it possible to find light? Can God still be good, even after goodbye?

Created from more than forty hours of intimate conversations with the journalist Seán O’Hagan, it is a profoundly thoughtful exploration, in Cave’s own words, of what really drives his life and creativity. The audiobook has been recorded so that the listener, especially when playing through headphones, sits between Cave and O’Hagan. The book draws candidly on Cave’s life, from his early childhood to the present day, his loves, his work ethic and his dramatic transformation in recent years.

In his exceptionally thought-provoking and moving memoir, neurosurgeon Joseph D. Stern explores how personal loss influences the way physicians relate to patients and their families.

Austen Years is a deeply felt and sensitive examination of a writer’s relationship to reading, and to her own family, winding together memoir, criticism, and biographical and historical material about Austen herself. And like the sequence of Austen’s novels, the scope of Austen Years widens successively, with each chapter following one of Austen's novels. We begin with Cohen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she raises her small children and contemplates her father’s last letter.

The death of a sibling is unlike any other. Gloria Reuben's little brother died just before his 22nd birthday. Two decades later, her oldest brother, Denis, died two weeks short of his 60th birthday. In My Brothers' Keeper, Gloria bares her soul as she reveals the intimate details of her life at home as a young girl. How the death of her father when she was 12 shaped her view of love and life. How David's death was the impetus for her move from Canada to the United States. And how her brother Denis was her heart's twin in a multitude of ways.

Leslie Gray Streeter is not cut out for widowhood. She's not ready for hushed rooms and pitying looks. She is not ready to stand graveside, dabbing her eyes in a classy black hat. If she had her way she'd wear her favorite curve-hugging leopard print dress to Scott's funeral; he loved her in that dress! Looking at widowhood through the prism of race, mixed marriage, and aging, Black Widow redefines the stages of grief, from coffin shopping to day-drinking, to being a grown-ass woman crying for your mommy, to breaking up and making up with God....

"Okay, Lord, you can have him. But if he must die, I want it to be for something big. I want someone’s life to be changed forever." This is what Laura Sobeich prayed when she found out her 17-year-old son had only one year to live. With this desperate prayer, she released her son to God’s will. At that point, Zach Sobiech was just another teenager battling cancer. When his mother told him to think about writing good-bye letters to family and friends, he decided instead to write songs. One of them, "Clouds", captured hearts and changed not one life but millions, making him an international sensation.