The Mercury News catches up with science writer Mary Roach, the author of a Stiff, “a rollicking yet respectful” book about cadavers. Stiff has been on the The New York Times paperback bestseller list for twelve weeks.

Roach, 45, who lives in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights district with her husband, Ed, got the idea for Stiff while writing columns on the outer fringes of science for online magazine Salon.com . One column, published just in time for Thanksgiving, examined how much you can eat before your stomach bursts, based on research done on a corpse.

After noticing that two other articles featuring cadavers also attracted many readers, her editors suggested a new column called “The Dead Beat,” Roach recalls. When that didn’t work out, she took her research to an agent and got signed up for Stiff.

She already knew she wasn’t squeamish. “I had been to several surgeries where the surgeon said, ‘Ms. Roach, I need you to step back,’ because I practically put my head in the incision.”