A widow who lusts...a daughter who aches...a lover who obsesses...a shopaholic who hungers...a daredevil who desires...a single woman who longs...an outsider who hopes...an artist who craves...and a funeral-junkie who needs. These are the women who inhabit the eerily honest, often heartbreaking world Alix Strauss has created in The Joy of Funerals. Begun as a "Lives" column in the New York Times Magazine, this riveting collection of interwoven stories explores the disturbing lives of nine young women, each willing to take drastic measures to fill the voids created by longing and loneliness.

In "Recovering Larry," a woman mourns for her dead husband by having sex with grieving men. In "Shrinking Away," a woman pays a daring shiva call on her psychiatrist's widow. "Swimming Without Annette" explores a woman's obsession with her dead wife's killer, while "Still Life" peers into the life of a pregnant artist who wishes to paint herself out of a bad marriage and into a prettier world. In "Post-Dated," a single woman wonders if her recently defunct date was perhaps the perfect man.

Read independently, these vivid and raw stories stand on their own. When read as a collection, they are anchored together by the novella, The Joy of Funerals, which follows the life of Nina, a single thirty-something woman who attends the funerals of the deceased characters in the previous stories.

Written with raw wit, mordant humor and a unique voice, Strauss explores our basic need for human connection while trying to answer the penetrating questions, 'where do I belong' and the 'how do I fit in.' The Joy of Funerals is a smart, vivid, and arresting look into the inner world of those left behind, and those still holding on.