title: The Grim Reader: Writings on Death, Dying, and Living on
author: Maura Spiegel
description: From the best-selling <i>How We Die</i> by Sherwin Nuland to our fascination with serial murders, from the AIDS epidemic to the concerns of our aging population, America continues to express a widespread curiosity about death and dying. In <i>The Grim Reader</i>, editors Maura Spiegel and Richard Tristman have gathered the best of the new writings on the subject of death along with classic statements on mortality to produce an essential resource for the heart and mind.
zlib_text: A NOVEL BY THE AUTHOR OF THE 25TH HO
  
  The Death of Kyralessa
  a novel by C.
  Virgil Gheorghiu
  As
  in the author's immensely popular
  The 25th Hour, the setting for The Death
  ofKyralessa is Eastern Europe. The story
  centers on General Dracopol's increas-
  ingly
  frenzied
  attempts
  to
  apprehend
  Bogomil,
  a modern-day Robin Hood
  who has been waylaying the taxes, and
  on
  Bogomil's
  determination
  to
  bring
  honor and respect to Kyralessa, a small
  village in Romania.
  As the tension and suspense mount,
  Dracopol
  resorts
  to
  taking
  the
  entire
  village
  prisoner
  within
  his
  luxurious
  estate to force them to reveal Bogomil's
  whereabouts.
  The characterization
  is bold and the
  confrontation explicit, and Gheorghiu's
  masterly
  skill
  is such
  that within
  the
  broad compass of the conflict, the lives
  and habits, people and ways of a whole
  society are laid bare.
  This tour de force is marked by a gentle
  irony
  that
  strips
  the masks from
  the
  main
  characters,
  revealing
  their
  secret
  continued on back flap
  
  Digitized by the Int