Central Kansas Library System

Stiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For two thousand years, cadavers-some willingly, some unwittingly-have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. In this fascinating account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries and tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro...

On the day the orphanage where he has grown up closes, J.D. discovers that he is the son of Frankenstein's monster, so he sets out to find the people that all the mismatched parts that he inherited came from--and do it before Frankenstein's creepy daughter, who wants to outdo her father, can find them.

Frannie O'Neill, a young and talented veterinarian whose husband was recently murdered, comes across an amazing discovery in the woods near her animal hospital. Soon after, Kit Harrison, an unconventional FBI agent, arrives on Frannie's doorstep. And then there's the child loose in the back woods, 11 year-old Max, one of the most unforgettable and startling creations in thriller fiction.

While investigating the death of his mother who was a scientist, Chris Snow discovers she was engaged in secret experiments on a nearby military base, experiments which went wrong and which produced monsters. The next he knows, the monsters come visiting and they are not friendly

Follows the last man on Earth as he struggles to survive while fending off the infected survivors of a devastating vampiric plague. A brilliant scientist who raced to discover a cure for the man-made virus as humanity came crumbling down all around him, Robert Neville was inexplicably immune to the highly contagious superbug. Now the entire population of New York City -- and perhaps the world -- has been transformed into carnivorous bloodsuckers that...

He's hunting her. Maddox Kane has one goal - track Luna Ashton. He's the best hunter on his team, finely honed and designed by Uncle Sam to be an unstoppable killing machine. He's a super soldier - faster, stronger, and deadlier than anyone else. Maddox can keep his emotions under careful lock and key because he can't afford to feel. Feeling is too dangerous, and the attraction feels for luna is positively lethal. Luna has no memory of being in the...

An African-American woman becomes an unwitting pioneer for medical breakthroughs when her cells are used to create the first immortal human cell line in the early 1950s.

"Shelly Hampton intends to spend the holidays alone in her family?s mountain cabin, but when a snow-covered stranger appears on her door-step, her plans are shot straight to hell. The man before her seems oddly familiar, and he stirs a dark need within her. It?s soon apparent that John Smith is far more than a normal man--he?s too strong, too fast, and she could swear that he seems to read her thoughts?and know her most secret desires. But is John...

When seventh-grader Jake McQuade mistakes the world's first ingestible knowledge pills for jelly beans, he suddenly knows all about physics and geometry and can speak Swahili (though Spanish would be a lot more useful)--but his sort-of girlfriend Grace thinks they can use his new found brilliance to save their middle school from the new principal, who is conspiring to get it shut down.