The Dead Hand Book is a memorial to mortality and the ancestral liaison with death through quiet and sweetlymacabre short stories. The Dead Hand Book is a memorial to mortality and the ancestral liaison with death through quiet and sweetlymacabre short stories. The collection of fables is inspired by the manner those long gone have had their memories engraved onto slate and marble stones with the cadence of an old Folk song or Murder Ballad. Tales of warning the deepest loves honored by surviv