Author Patricia Cornwell has brought Kay Scarpetta back. The character, who helped make Cornwell a best-selling writer, returns in the author's new book, "Book of the Dead." Fans also will recognize familiar characters from previous books, like Dr. Self and Pete Marino. The novel has the forensic pathologist Scarpetta checking into the death of a young tennis star after she discovers a connection with the unidentified body of a South Carolina boy. For more on this murder mystery, read an excerpt below.

AGUASCALIENTES, Mexico -- The house of the dead awaits your arrival. Just off the courtyard of a former Carmelite convent here, half a dozen clay sculptures of the dark Aztec underworld lord Mictlantecuhtli fix you with voracious grins and hollow eyes. In a next-door gallery, scores of miniature skeletons strum instruments, cavort in beery fiestas and enlace their bony limbs in fervid lovemaking.

No action has been taken by the Wisconsin Legislature on a bill to formally criminalize necrophilia. State Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, introduced Senate Bill 247 on July 25, a day before the state Court of Appeals issued its own sex-with-a-corpse ruling. It said sex with a corpse isn't a violation of the state's sexual assault laws, agreeing with a ruling last fall by Grant County Circuit Judge George S. Curry.

Still grieving from the loss of his father two months earlier, Andra Walters felt some comfort in January 2006 when he received his father's cremated remains. Then another set arrived.

ST. LOUIS — A perfectly preserved body, devoid of skin, emerges from its coffin, tendons, blood vessels and back muscles exposed, and tosses aside its shroud to greet the city. “The Emerging Skeleton,” part of Dr. Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds 3: An Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies exhibit, which opened today at the Saint Louis Science Center, is like a medical student’s version of “Night of the Living Dead.”

Biloxi, MS - Two years after Katrina washed out graves at Biloxi City Cemetery, the dead have once again been put to final rest. Several remains were reburied on Friday after a small ceremony. No one knows who they are or when they died. No one even knows exactly how many people are in the coffin. Dick Henderson, a deacon at St. James Catholic Church in Gulfport, says what is certain is that the dead within Biloxi City Cemetery deserve a final resting place.