A Trick I Learned from Dead Men — Kitty Aldridge

After the disappearance of their father and the sudden death of their mother, Lee Hart and his deaf brother, Ned, imagine all is lost until Lee lands a traineeship at their local funeral home and discovers there is life after death. Here, in the company of a crooning ex-publican, a closet pole vaulter, a terminally-ill hearse driver, and the dead of their local town, old wounds begin to heal and love arrives as a beautiful florist aboard a 'Fleurtations' delivery van.

Sometimes sad, often hilarious and ultimately tragic and deeply moving, "A Trick I Learned from Dead Men" is a pitch-perfect small masterpiece from a writer described by Richard Ford as having "a moral grasp upon life that is grave, knowing, melancholy, often extremely funny and ultimately optimistic".