Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife »

Journalist and former Salon.com columnist Mary Roach didn't leave readers and critics cold with her first book, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. In fact, the comical-yet-scientific look at the "life" of the dead body throughout history earned her a spot in the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program.

"Equal parts Groucho Marx and Stephen Jay Gould, both enlightening and entertaining."—Sunday Denver Post & Rocky Mountain News

The New York Times Book Review - Kate Zernike

Roach is a wonderfully vivid writer and most fun when she is exploring the world of the modern soul-searchers. Spook, like Stiff, is a "who knew?" kind of book, and it's fascinating to discover that a researcher in the 21st century would be, say, trying to weigh the consciousness of a leech. And as a reporter, Roach has a keen eye for the perfect detail, an ear for the zinging quotation and a finely tuned sense of the preposterous…Spook is less about figuring out what science says about the afterlife than it is a celebration of the wide, occasionally crazy spectrum of human pursuit.