Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers - Tapa dura

As a book about dead bodies and how they are used by the living, the subject matter is macabre. But the author is clearly having such a good time with the material that you cannot help but read on in a state of appalled fascination. While plenty of the lurid stuff about dissection, body snatching, airplane and car crash victims is not actually new, it is convenient to have it all rescued from the twilight status of urban myth and dressed respectably between smart hardcovers. This is not, emphatically, a book about death and dying. It is about what is left behind once the business of living is done with. The author is able to write about her subject with a certain clinical detachment and black humour, but this is still not a book for the recently bereaved or for anyone looking forward to a long stay in hospital. And it is definitely not for any one planning to leave a body to medical science.