How well do you know your neighbor? Your co-worker? Exchanging pleasantries or group grumbling is certainly common enough. Maybe going out bowling or having a drink sometimes. But did you ever notice what people say when they find out the guy next door was a serial killer? "I can't believe it. He was the nicest man!"

Dexter Morgan is that nice guy. In Jeff Lindsay's debut thriller, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, he is a blood spatter expert for the Miami Dade Police Department, well liked by his co-workers, and helpful to his sister Deborah. And he is a serial killer. At times possessed by what he refers to as his "Dark Passenger", Dexter has a gruesome, ritualistic method of dealing out death, but follows a code that only allows him to kill other killers. But he evaluates emotions he knows he should possess, and has a strange sense of humor that allows him not only to pass as normal, but as a pleasantly amiable guy. This is the first book in a series.

If you haven't already seen it, I also recommend the popular Showtime series now on DVD, simply called Dexter. Dark? Yes. Grisly? Yes. Weirdly humorous? Yes.

I've always liked books that answer questions and present facts. Yes, I've passed an hour or two reading interesting parts of an almanac, or books like Do Penguins Have Knees? by David Felman (the answer is yes they do). Well, if you would like to know all about cadavers, the science of sex, the occult, or the intimate details of traveling in space, then try the following books by author and journalist Mary Roach:

Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void  

(New this month!!!)


For a great article about Mary Roach and her work, check out the article "All the Right Stuff and the Gross Stuff" in the New York Times.

So much of society seems to put great value into being beautiful. Where would Vogue, Cosmopolitan or Glamour magazines be without it? As a teenager, I remember thinking that I should grow up to look like a model. Now I tend to look at those covers and think "That woman is too skinny. She looks unhealthy!" Then I flip through and look at the magazine anyway. Ok, I'm a contradiction to myself.

The subject of ideal beauty is what interested me in Scott Westerfield's book Uglies. Set in a futuristic society, there are Uglies and Pretties. When a teen turns sixteen, they are given an operation that makes them beautiful and then they get to live in the wonderful world of New Pretty Town where everybody parties and has fun all the time. Tally Youngblood has been conditioned from birth to believe that this is the best thing that can ever happen to a person. But after she meets Shay, another teen who proposes that the operation is an unnecessary mutilation and that people are fine the way they are, Tally begins to question her beliefs. A twist of fate turns her into a spy and she is told she must find and turn in a band of Uglies that ran away and now live in the forest, or she will never be made Pretty. Westerfield's presentation of the desire for beauty and brainwashing of teens makes for an absorbing read. Uglies is the first book in a series, followed by Pretties, Specials and Extras.