Part memoir and part manifesto, Valentine's book lifts the lid on daily life in the mortuary . . . Valentine bares her own soul . . . with visceral attention to physical and emotional detail - Wendy Moore, Guardian A fascinating portrait . . . one seriously intriguing read - Glamour A grisly topic, but a glorious read - Mail on Sunday A day in the life of Carla Valentine - curator, pathology technician and 'death professional' - is not your average day. She spent ten years training and working as an Anatomical Pathology Technologist: where the mortuary slab was her desk, and that day's corpses her task list. Past Mortems tells Carla's stories of those years, as well as investigating the body alongside our attitudes towards death - shedding light on what the living can learn from dead and the toll the work can take on the living souls who carry it out. Fascinating and insightful, Past Mortems reveals the truth about what happens when the mortuary doors swing shut or the lid of the coffin closes . . .

Past Mortems

Science & Math

Valentine, Carla

Biological Sciences

Little, Brown Book Group

A study of the forensics of Agatha Christie, from author and pathologist, Carla Valentine\nFascinating - Prima\nEngaging and informative - Guardian\nAgatha Christie is one of our most beloved authors - a storyteller unparalleled in her clever plots and twisting tales. But Agatha was also a forensic expert; in each of her books she employs an expert weaving of human observation, ingenuity and genuine science of the era.\nIn Murder Isn't Easy Carla Valentine illuminates all of Agatha's incredible knowledge, showing how she stayed at the cutting edge of forensics from ballistics to fingerprint analysis, as seen through much-loved characters such as Poirot and Miss Marple.\nFrom the glamour and grit of Agatha Christie's stories, to the real-life cases that inspired them, Murder Isn't Easy will immerse you in the forensics that influenced generations of writers and scientists alike.

Murder Isn't Easy

Biographies & Memoirs

True Crime

SPHERE

Carla Valentine works with the dead. After studying forensics, she assisted pathologists with post-mortems for years before becoming the curator of the world’s most famous pathology museum. When it comes to death, she truly is an expert, and in this book she shares that expertise.
 Using the most common post-mortem process as the backbone of the narrative, The Chick and the Dead takes the reader through the process of an autopsy while also describing the history and changing cultures of our relationship with the dead. The book is full of vivid insight into what happens to our bodies in the end. Each chapter considers an aspect of an autopsy alongside an aspect of Carla’s own life and work and touches on some of the more controversial aspects of our feelings towards death, including the relationship between sex and death and our attitudes toward human tissue collection.
 Starting with the first cut, we move from external examination into the body itself, discovering more about the heart, stomach and brain, and into dismembered and reconstructed bodies, at each stage taking a colorful detour into the question of what these things can teach us about the living. Join Carla on the journey from microscope-requesting nine-year-old to pathology educator and death engager at a Victorian museum (a journey made via around 5,000 autopsies) as she tells the story of exactly what it’s like to live a life immersed in death.

The Chick and the Dead: Life and Death Behind Mortuary Doors

Professionals & Academics

St.Martin's Press

Discover the science of forensics through Agatha Christie's novels Agatha Christie is the bestselling novelist of all time, and nearly every story she ever wrote involves one--or, more commonly, several--dead bodies. And the cause of death, the motives behind violent crimes, the clues that inevitably are left behind, and the people who put the pieces together to solve the mystery invite the reader to analyze the evidence and race to find the answer before the detective does. Nearly every step of the way, Christie outlines the nuts and bolts of early 20th-century crime detection, relying on physical evidence to tell the real story behind the facades humans erect to escape detection. Christie wouldn't have talked of "forensics" as it is understood today--most of her work predates the modern developments of forensics science--but in each tale she harnesses the power of human observation, ingenuity, and scientific developments of the era. A fascinating, science-based deep dive, The Science of Murderexamines the use of fingerprints, firearms, handwriting, blood spatter analysis, toxicology, and more in Christie's beloved works.

The Science of Murder: The Forensics of Agatha Christie (Fascinating True Crime Book)

History

World

Sourcebooks

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Books by Valentine, Carla