cover image The Zombie Autopsies: Secret Notebooks from the Apocalypse

The Zombie Autopsies: Secret Notebooks from the Apocalypse

Steven C. Schlozman, Grand Central, $19.99 (208p) ISBN 978-0-446-56466-3

Presented as the journal kept by a neuroscientist investigating the medical causes of zombiism, Schlozman's clever debut shows that there's still life left in the overworked horror theme of the living dead. Dr. Stanley Blum is already infected (as is two-thirds of humankind) with ataxic neurodegenerative satiety deficiency syndrome (ANSD)—the virus that makes flesh-eating zombies lurch and lunch—when he decamps to Bassas da India, an island overseen by the U.N., to vivisect captive zombies in the hope of isolating the pathogen before he succumbs to it. Schlozman makes the science both accessible and plausible. In lieu of a meaty plot, he provides a grim vision of zombie apocalypse and a surprise explanation for the virus's origin. Printed as a handwritten diary and illustrated in gory glory with clinical drawings by Andrea Sparacio, this book is sure to be scarfed up by ravenous zombiephiles. (Apr.)