Delia has made a living writing modern household guides. If you ask, she can tell you how to get the wine stain out of your linen, and the proper way to boil an egg. As the book opens, she is not yet forty, but has only a short time to live. Unlike the many fans of her advice column--people who can't quite cope with dirty shirt collars--Delia knows just what to do. What she needs is a manual --the kind she is expert at writing. Realizing this could be her greatest achievement, she sets to work. But in the writing, she is forced to confront the ghosts of her past: She realizes that there is a journey she needs to make and one last vital thing she needs to do. Yet just as Delia is coming to terms with the impossibility of her to-do list, an unexpected visitor helps her believe in her life's worth in a wholly surprising way. Witty and uplifting, The Household Guide to Dying is a beautifully written novel about life.