Life as a Casketeer

Author: Francis Tipene
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 177549179X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
*Stars of the hit television series The Casketeers, as seen on Netflix* Francis and Kaiora Tipene aren't your typical funeral directors. With their famous humour and big-hearted personalities, the TVNZ and Netflix reality TV stars are changing the way we think about death and grief. Life as a Casketeer reveals how Francis and Kaiora grew up in families that had few possessions but were rich with love and tikanga, and how they came to work in their often misunderstood profession. It's also a book about the Maori world view and traditional funeral customs. The Tipenes make death feel less mysterious and life feel more precious. But most of all, Life as a Casketeer is a love story - for whanau, for culture and for each other. It is full of joy and sorrow, tears and laughter.

It's Your Funeral!

Author: Kathy Benjamin
Publisher: Quirk Books
ISBN: 1683692950
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
You can’t attend your own funeral. But you can have a blast planning it! Death is scary—but planning your funeral doesn't have to be! It's Your Funeral! will help demystify death, decrease your anxiety, and put the fun back in funeral, whether that means a drunken bacchanal or a somber reflection on just how great you were. Every stage of the legacy planning process is considered, from a burial outfit to a funeral theme. Practical and cheeky questions alike are answered, including: • What is the most eco-friendly burial method? • Can I write my own obituary? • Can my body be shot into space after I die? • How can I manage my digital legacy? Offering a plethora of curious facts, strange stories, and inspiration to help you think outside the coffin, It’s Your Funeral! includes worksheets that will ensure your wishes are recorded for posterity. Planning for death should be the time of your life, so let’s get started!

Settlers' Creek

Author: Carl Nixon
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited
ISBN: 1869794044
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Book Description
A poignant and contentious novel by a rising star of New Zealand literature. Box Saxton just wants to bury his teenage stepson’s body in the churchyard near the farm where Box grew up. What happens, though, when the boy’s biological father, a Maori leader, unexpectedly turns up in the days before the funeral and forcibly takes the boy’s body? According to Maori custom the boy must be buried in the tribe’s ancestral cemetery at the small coastal town of Kaipuna. According to the law there is very little Box can do. With no plan and little hope, Box gets in his old truck and drives north, desperate and heartbroken. Settlers' Creek explores the claims of both indigenous people and more recent settlers to have a spiritual link to the land. 'Brave, bold and unflinching, Carl Nixon's Settler's Creek is one of the best novels to come out of New Zealand. It's not only a gripping, brutal, thriller but also a dissection of a country and its culture. It's the kind of book that gets you run out of town.' - Witi Ihimaera

Life Lessons

Author: Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, David Kessler
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471105121
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
If you only had a few days left, how would you live your life differently? Having now faced her own death the famous 'death and dying lady' takes on life and living, showing us how the lessons learned by many people - including herself - at the end, can teach us to improve and enjoy life at any time. Each one of us asks at some point, 'Is this really how I want to live my life?' This is a life-changing book, reminding us that the tragedy is not that life is short, but that we often see only in hindsight what really matters. LIFE LESSONS faces life's challenges, devoting a chapter to fourteen crucial areas: identity, love and relationships, loss and fear, power, time, tolerance, patience, surrender, guilt, happiness, play, creativity. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler have been to the edge of life, hundreds of times, with those who have died and those who have survived. They invite us to explore these stories, showing us a better way to live and the way towards a deeper happiness. This very positive and hopeful book is a unique way to see each life as meaningful and profound, as an authentic experience that can fulfil its potential.

Impossible

Author: Stan Walker
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 1775491781
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Book Description
A startling and important memoir about family and forgiveness, love and redemption For the first time, Stan Walker speaks with startling honesty about abuse and addiction, hardship and excess, cancer and discrimination, and growing up in a family where love and violence were horribly entwined. From one of the finest singers to emerge from Australia and New Zealand Aotearoa in a generation, Impossible is a story of redemption and the power of forgiveness. It's also a story about courage and hope; about a young Maori boy finding his place and purpose, never forgetting who he is and where he came from. PRAISE FOR IMPOSSIBLE: As a chronicle of Walker's life, it is gripping, but where the book achieves greatness - and I mean real, true greatness - is as a totem to humanity's capacity for kindness. It's an insight into the soul of a man whose capacity for forgiveness seems boundless. - Sam Brooks 'This is a can't-put-down read, direct and proud and inspirational, an honest document of life in New Zealand on the wrong side of the tracks...' - Steve Braunias 'A remarkable, improbable tale of a young Maori man (Tuhoe and Ngati Tuwharetoa) rising to greatness and finding his purpose after surviving horrific childhood abuse and countless other tragic situations.' - Sebastian van der Zwan 'Stan Walker astonished me with his masterfully structured memoir of abuse and forgiveness.' - Catherine Woulfe

Does This Mean You'll See Me Naked?

Author: Robert Webster
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1402250843
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Book Description
Why would someone want to hang out with dead bodies? With curious anecdotes and unbelievable truth, funeral director Robert Webster reveals that answer and more, offering readers entertaining and quirky stories gleaned from a life lived around death. Webster tackles those embarrassing questions we all have about what really goes on bhind the scenes when you've left this world: Strange things people put in caskets The biggest rip-offs in the business The crazy things that happen to a body after death Lime, waz, and other ways to hide the truth The most important thing an undertaker does How to avoid the high-pressure funeral parlor What that's not a coffin the body is resting in

Gangland

Author: Jared Savage
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 1775491935
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Book Description
New Zealand's underworld of organised crime and deadly gangs 'The best true-crime book of the year by a long stretch.' - Steve Braunias, Newsroom 'A series of rip-snorting yarns about gangs, drugs, fancy cars, wads of cash, violence, and guns - Aotearoa New Zealand style.' - Simon Bridges New Zealand is now one of the most lucrative illicit drug markets in the world. Organised crime is about making money. It's a business. But over the past 20 years, the dealers have graduated from motorcycle gangs to Asian crime syndicates and now the most dangerous drug lords in the world - the Mexican cartels. In Gangland, award-winning investigative reporter Jared Savage shines a light into New Zealand's rising underworld of organised crime and violent gangs. The brutal execution of a husband-and-wife; the undercover cop who infiltrated a casino VIP lounge; the midnight fishing trip which led to the country's biggest cocaine bust; the gangster who shot his best friend in a motorcycle shop: these stories go behind the headlines and open the door to an invisible world - a world where millions of dollars are made, life is cheap, and allegiances change like the flick of a switch.

Teasing Secrets from the Dead

Author: Emily Craig, Ph.D.
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 1400049237
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
Teasing Secrets from the Dead is a front-lines story of crime scene investigation at some of the most infamous sites in recent history. In this absorbing, surprising, and undeniably compelling book, forensics expert Emily Craig tells her own story of a life spent teasing secrets from the dead. Emily Craig has been a witness to history, helping to seek justice for thousands of murder victims, both famous and unknown. It’s a personal story that you won’t soon forget. Emily first became intrigued by forensics work when, as a respected medical illustrator, she was called in by the local police to create a model of a murder victim’s face. Her fascination with that case led to a dramatic midlife career change: She would go back to school to become a forensic anthropologist—and one of the most respected and best-known “bone hunters” in the nation. As a student working with the FBI in Waco, Emily helped uncover definitive proof that many of the Branch Davidians had been shot to death before the fire, including their leader, David Koresh, whose bullet-pierced skull she reconstructed with her own hands. Upon graduation, Emily landed a prestigious full-time job as forensic anthropologist for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, a state with an alarmingly high murder rate and thousands of square miles of rural backcountry, where bodies are dumped and discovered on a regular basis. But even with her work there, Emily has been regularly called to investigations across the country, including the site of the terrorist attack on the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, where a mysterious body part—a dismembered leg—was found at the scene and did not match any of the known victims. Through careful scientific analysis, Emily was able to help identify the leg’s owner, a pivotal piece of evidence that helped convict Timothy McVeigh. In September 2001, Emily received a phone call summoning her to New York City, where she directed the night-shift triage at the World Trade Center’s body identification site, collaborating with forensics experts from all over the country to collect and identify the remains of September 11 victims. From the biggest news stories of our time to stranger-than-true local mysteries, these are unforgettable stories from the case files of Emily Craig’s remarkable career.

She Is Not Your Rehab

Author: Matt Brown
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited
ISBN: 0143775995
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Book Description
At My Fathers Barbers, Mataio (Matt) Faafetai Malietoa Brown offers men a haircut with a difference: a safe space to be seen and heard without judgement. From his barbershop chair, Matt has inspired a new generation of New Zealand men to break free from the cycle of abuse — and those men have in turn inspired him and his wife, Sarah, to create the global anti-violence movement, She Is Not Your Rehab. In this raw and unflinching book Matt shares his own story and those of his clients, of surviving family violence and abuse, and how they were able to find healing and turn their lives around. He introduces the people and concepts that have helped him heal, and gives readers the tools they need to begin their own journeys. She is Not Your Rehab demonstrates the power of vulnerability and honesty in addressing pain and shame, and shows how anyone can empower themselves by taking responsibility for their own healing.

The Treaty of Waitangi

Author: Claudia Orange
Publisher: Bridget Williams Books
ISBN: 1877242489
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1009

Book Description
"The Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840 by over 500 chiefs, and by William Hobson, representing the British Crown. To the British it was the means by which they gained sovereignty over New Zealand. But to Maori people it had a very different significance, and they are still affected by the terms of the Treaty, often adversely.The Treaty of Waitangi, the first comprehensive study of the Treaty, deals with its place in New Zealand history from its making to the present day. The story covers the several Treaty signings and the substantial differences between Maori and English texts; the debate over interpretation of land rights and the actions of settler governments determined to circumvent Treaty guarantees; the wars of sovereignty in the 1860s and the longstanding Maori struggle to secure a degree of autonomy and control over resources." --Publisher.