The global doubling of human life expectancy between 1850 and 1950 is arguably one of the most consequential developments in human history, undergirding massive improvements in human life and lifestyles. In 1850, Americans died at an average age of 30. Today, the average is almost 80. This story is typically told as a series of medical breakthroughs-Jenner and vaccination, Lister and antisepsis, Snow and germ theory, Fleming and penicillin-but...

Feisty Dr. Siri Paiboun is no respecter of persons or party; at his age he feels he can afford to be independent. In this, the second novel in the series, he travels to Luang Prabang, where he communes with the deposed king who is resigned to his fate: it was predicted long ago. And he attends a conference of shamans called by the Communist Party to deliver an ultimatum to the spirits: obey party orders or get out. But as a series of mutilated corpses...

"Laos, 1979. Dr. Siri Paiboun, the twice-retired ex-National Coroner of Laos, receives an unmarked package in the mail. Inside is a handwoven pha sin, a colorful traditional skirt worn in northern Laos. A lovely present, but who sent it to him, and why? And, more importantly, why is there a severed human finger stitched into the sin's lining?" -- Amazon.com.

"A corpse lying at the bottom of the stairs. A beautiful but troubled young woman. A brutal, decades-old murder. And the man charged with making sense of it all. Clay Edison is a former star athlete turned coroner's investigator. It's his job to care for the dead and the people they leave behind. It's not his job to solve mysteries. But some cases--and some people--can't be resisted. What he discovers will set him on a quest to overturn a hideous...

When a murdered woman suddenly reappears in her Lao village home with clairvoyant powers and is enlisted by a ghost to help find his remains at the bottom of a river, national coroner Siri Paiboun oversees the excavation.

Jenny Copper, a coroner with a detective's eye, investigates the disappearance of two young Muslim students, who vanished without a trace seven years ago. The police had concluded that the boys, under surveillance for some time for suspicion of terrorism, had fled to Pakistan. Now, sufficient time has passed for the law to declare the boys legally dead, and a final declaration is left up to Jenny who isn't satisfied with this easy solution.

"Between getting into a tangle with a corrupt local judge, and discovering a disturbing black-market business, Dr. Siri Paiboun, the ex-national coroner of Laos and his friend Inspector Phosy have their hands full in the thirteenth installment of Colin Cotterill's quirky, critically acclaimed series. Dr. Siri Paiboun, the ex-national coroner of Laos, may have more experience dissecting bodies than making art, but when he manages to smuggle a fancy...

Supervising an excavation for the remains of a U.S. fighter pilot who crashed in a northern Laos jungle a decade earlier, national coroner Dr. Siri becomes suspicious when a series of fatal accidents culminates in his team getting trapped in a cabin.

"Deputy Coroner Clay Edison has his hands full. He's got a new baby who won't sleep. He's working the graveyard shift. And he's trying, for once, to mind his own business. Then comes the first call. Workers demolishing a local park have made a haunting discovery: the decades-old skeleton of a child. But whose? And how did it get there? No sooner has Clay begun to investigate than he receives a second call - this one from a local businessman, wondering...