From our earliest myths to our most advanced scientific theories, humanity has grappled with the nature of dying, and what, if anything, comes after. The Book of the Dead confronts our terrible mortality with unflinching honesty and breathtaking imagination, taking us on a journey from the dusty plains of the Australian Outback where wives mysteriously vanish, to the fog-shrouded interstates of a man’s regret, to the deep, dark tombs of Martian queens, and to the somber shores of a world where the dead refuse to stay buried.