Mortal Remains

Six Feet Under meets Edward Scissorhands in Mortal Remains, a tight, smartly written romance with an occult twist. Though her classmates call her Morticia and Ghoul Girl, Lily actually likes her work—the dead are good listeners, and they don't judge. Lily learns their stories, shares her worries with them as she makes up their faces, and embroiders pillows for their final rest. "The way I figure it," says Lily, "a person's arrival into this world is about as unglamorous as it gets. The least I can do is dignify their departure." Then, after a mysterious explosion burns down a neighborhood house long the source of weird stories, Lily and her friends poke around in the debris and come across the hatch to an underground vault. Inside, they find an injured teenage boy who has been trapped there for days. He has little memory of his life before the explosion and speaks in an odd, stilted manner that suggests limited...