Ben Reeves

Travis lives an unassuming life with his cat in a small English town. Travis also happens to be the cosmic force of Death, visiting people in their final days and hours of life, before shepherding them into whatever happens next.

He listens to their stories, doesn't judge, and never tries to change anyone's fate... until he meets a young, single midwife called Dalia and her boisterous eight-year-old daughter, Layla. As he gets closer to this small, seemingly unremarkable family, Travis begins to learn what it is that makes life so worth living, and so what it is that is irrevocably lost in death.

Full of compassion and deep magic, Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt might be a novel about Death, but it's also about the joy of being alive - appreciating each day we have, from the people around us to the strange wonder of our spinning world.

Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt 

Cassandra Tang

The rain suspended in space, a billion glass beads reflecting the scene.

The rhythm of the world. It ebbs and it flows and swells and grows like a restless heartbeat.

And yet in the nothingness there is a life more real than any wedding or christening or birthday party. In these tiny moments, when the spectacle is stripped away, when there is no reason for the day, what’s left appears to be something true, something fundamental to being a person.

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