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"Unexpectedly good humour": 'Post-Mortem' shines an "interesting light" on the jobs that revolve around death

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Sat, 22 Aug 2026, 1:46pm
Photo / Getty
Photo / Getty

Post-Mortem by Tim Booth  

Death is a certainty, but what happens in the lead-up - and in its aftermath - is anything but predictable. Nobody knows this better than those who work with death every day.  

There's no time for an existential crisis when your 9-to-5 involves responding to fatal plane accidents, transporting organs for urgent surgery, or fending off a dying man's request for Nickelback.  

In this book, bestselling author and paramedic Tim Booth reveals the darkly funny, often absurd, and sometimes horrifying realities of the professionals most people hope never to meet, including: - crime scene cleaners - organ procurement coordinators - gravediggers - combat medics - emergency nurses and so many more.  

Blending laugh-out-loud humour with unflinching moments of poignancy, Post-Mortem tells the stories of the people who face daily life's final chapter - so we don't have to. 

  

Brain Damage by Frieda McFadden  

How can you survive when you can't remember who wants you dead? 

Dr. Charly McKenna had the perfect life: a thriving dermatology practice, a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park, and a handsome husband who adored her. 

Until the night a bullet tore through her skull… and stole everything. 

Now Charly wakes in a rehabilitation hospital unable to walk, speak, or remember her own name. All she knows is that someone tried to kill her—and they may still be out there. As fragments of memory surface, so do unsettling questions about the people around her, including the attentive man who keeps appearing at her bedside. 

The truth of what happened that night lives somewhere inside her brain. And as Charly pieces together the jagged edges of her past, she begins to realize the most terrifying possibility: the person who wants her dead might be the one she once trusted most. 

 

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