Today's Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl) prompt is a freebie, something I both love and loathe. I'm still tired from my 2-week vacay and my creative juices are just not flowing right now! However, this morning I started listening to a new audiobook, in which a teenager moves to Italy for the summer following her mother's death in order to live with her father, a man she's never met. When she arrives at his home, she's horrified to discover that he lives next to a cemetery, of which he is the caretaker. Unlike the main character in this book, I adore cemeteries. Not only do I find them endlessly fascinating, but they don't scare me in the least; in fact, they fill me with a sense of peace and calm. This got me thinking about other books I've read and those I would like to read that feature graveyards in one way or another. It's probably a topic better suited for Halloween time than Easter, but oh well. I'm going with it:

1. Love & Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch—This is my current listen. As I said above, it's about a teen girl who goes to Italy to fulfill her mother's dying wish that she get to know her father. The situation is all kinds of awkward, and all Lina wants to do is hightail it back to Seattle. Everything changes when she's given a journal her mother kept while living in Italy; reading it leads Lina to hidden wonders and a well-kept secret that changes everything she knows about her mother and herself.

2. The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez—After watching a friend and fellow novelist drive herself mad trying to finish a book, Alma Cruz vows not to let her own unfinished manuscripts chase her down the same path. When she inherits a piece of land in her native Dominican Republic, she turns it into a cemetery for her untold stories, burying incomplete drafts and abandoned revisions. Despite her determination to let them die, the tales take on lives of their own, the characters insisting on telling their own stories, refusing to be forgotten...

3. Fallen Grace by Mary Hooper—In this YA historical novel, a young woman in Victorian England who has just given birth to an illegitimate child who is born dead travels to a posh cemetery to bury her infant in the coffin of a wealthy woman. It's the only gift she can give her poor baby. In the graveyard, she meets two people who will impact her impoverished life greatly as she ekes out her meager existence. Sounds bleak, but interesting. 

4. 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die by Loren Rhoads—This travel guide, complete with stunning photography, showcases interesting cemeteries around the world that draw hordes of visitors eager to enjoy their beautiful scenery, hear about their unique histories, and visit their famous residents.

5. Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest—Leda is a Seattle travel agent and a sometimes psychic. When she reroutes a police detective from a doomed flight, the detective realizes her special gift could make her very useful to the police. Leda agrees to help him solve a cold case while at the same time investigating one of her own: her fiancé's murder.

6. Cemetery Road by Greg Iles—When Marshall McEwan returns to his small Mississippi hometown to care for his dying father, he realizes just how rundown Bienville has become. Its only hope for revitalization is an expensive new Chinese paper mill. When two murders happen in town, threatening the town's future even more, Marshall—an experienced journalist—decides to investigate. Will the secrets he uncovers be the nail in the coffin of the dying town? 

7. The Orphan of Cemetery Hill by Hester Fox—Like #1, this YA novel features a young woman whose father works as a caretaker for a cemetery. When a series of grave robberies hits Boston, she uses her special gift—her ability to communicate with the dead—to take on a gang known as the "Resurrection Men." Her involvement will either save the city's cemeteries or land her in one of them. Permanently.

8. Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America's Cemeteries by Greg Melville—This non-fiction title examines the history of how Americans memorialize our dead and what it has meant in terms of history, politics, the environment, and more. Sounds fascinating!

9. The Grave Tender by Eliza Maxwell—Widowed and pregnant, Hadley Dixon returns to the east Texas town where she grew up. Members of her family are still whispered about there and those who remain refuse to talk about the disturbing rumors that float about. Hadley only wants a safe place for her children to grow up. If she starts digging into the past, what might she unleash on herself, her family, and her hometown?

10. The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen—Paranormal romance really isn't my thing, but this one sounds cute. Hart works as a marshal, keeping the magical land in which he lives under control. His job is not a popular one and he's got the crippling loneliness to show for it. Mercy is doing everything she can to keep her family's undertaking business afloat, including dealing with jerks like Hart. When the two enemies begin exchanging letters, pouring out their hearts to one another without knowing the other's identity, they get to know each other in ways they never could have before. What will happen when the new friends discover they are actually bitter enemies?

There you go, my somewhat macabre list. Do you love cemeteries like I do or do you avoid them like the plague? Are books set in or around graveyards as appealing to you as they are to me? Have you read any of the ones on my list? What did you think? What did you do for your freebie today? I'd truly love to know. Leave me a comment on this post and I will gladly return the favor on your blog. Please note that I am a week behind on commenting, but I will catch up!