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The body of a mutilated prostitute has been discovered in a linen closet at Buckingham Palace. Queen Victoria is away, but the Prince and Princess of Wales are in residence and so Thomas Pitt from Secret Services is called in to sort out the sordid matter with discretion.

Turns out four wealthy businessmen, accompanied by their wives, had been staying at the palace to discuss a project that has fired the prince’s imagination: the construction of a 6,000-mile railroad stretching the length of Africa.

Okay so the main character has spent seven years in a group home for disabled adults when blam – he’s in a car accident and his memory starts coming back in patches. He gets smarter. He also gets a new, better looking face, to replace the bashed-in one he’s been carrying around for those same seven years of bad luck.

Not an altogether encouraging start for a crime thriller. Another lost memory / metamorphosis story and haven’t there been more than enough of those in books and soap operas?

Thing is, author G.M. Ford (great name, huh?) makes it work in Nameless Night. His main character Paul Hardy is believable as he moves from dim witted to a man with some snap, and increasing physical skills. Ford shows not only the change from dependent to competent as it affects Hardy, but how it rewires his relationships with his former caretakers and fellow clients.

This week’s Hair Balls column takes a look at the wacky world of book-banning in the Texas prison system. It’s a world where accounts of caning women or dripping wax on them do not count as S&M, where former Senator Bob Dole is a child pornographer and “Letters to Penthouse” can be fine unless they involve even a single episode of lesbian loving.

Go click and read it, and then come back here for some further highlights we didn’t have space for, all taken from the paperwork banning or approving books in 2007:

Click the button below to listen to Nevada Barr reading from her latest work, followed by an interview with Night & Day Editor Olivia Flores Alvarez...

Nevada Barr fans have been anxiously awaiting the 14th installment of the Anna Pigeon series of mysteries and Winter Study does not disappoint. Set on Isle Royal in Lake Superior, where temperatures are around zero 24 hours a day, Winter Study follows Pigeon as she joins a wolf study team. As if being stuck in an icy camp out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of brainiac, self-absorbed scientists isn’t bad enough, Pigeon has to contend with a couple of Homeland Security bureaucrats and giant wolf right off Dr. Moreau’s island.

Catch Nevada Barr as she reads from Winter Study at 6:30 p.m. today. Murder by the Book, 2342 Bissonnet. For information, call 713-524-8597 or visit www.murderbooks.com. Free. – Olivia Flores Alvarez

Life Class is the latest Pat Barker novel, one that will again leave you feeling like an unschooled heathen because you’re ever so slightly underwhelmed.

Barker returns to the time of her famous, highly praised Great War trilogy. And the writing is fine as Barker traces the story of art students caught up in WWI.

Things happen, many of them Symbolic with a capital S. But there is ever hanging about a disappointing feeling that matters are never quite gelling to be as enthralling or affecting as you hope. And, since Barker’s books all come slathered with lavish critical blurbs and festooned with important awards, you can’t help feeling the trouble is not with her, it’s with you and your hoi polloi inability to recognize profound greatness when it’s right in front of your eyes.

If you can get over that nagging feeling, then Life Class will be as satisfying to you as the Regeneration trilogy. Which might, of course, mean you’ll be left wondering a bit at why you have that slightly underwhelmed feeling. – Richard Connelly

In the early 1950’s, it was considered a malevolent enough influence on American youth to inspire adult outrage, government intervention, and mass protests. Communism? Drugs? Homosexuality? No, it was the 10-cent comic book, and the hysteria surrounding its rise and disastrous fall put the Crypt Keeper right up there on the list of public enemies along with Khrushchev and Lucky Luciano.

In this groundbreaking book, David Hajdu gives the definitive account -- compelling, well-written and insightful -- of one of the most amazing stories in the history of American publishing.

Day One:

A copy of Geraldo Rivera’s His Panic: Why American Fear Hispanics in the U.S. just hit my desk. I haven’t even opened it and already I have some concerns.

For one, the title, His Panic. Gosh, what are the chances Rivera hopes to fan the immigration flames some? I appreciate intelligent, thoughtful conversation about immigration – even with people who disagree with me, but causing ‘panic’ about the issue is the tired, easy way out. That’s strike one.

Strike two is the subtitle: Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the U.S. Ah, Geraldo, some Hispanics are Americans. So are those American who are both Hispanic and American afraid of themselves? Well, damn. That’s rather schizophrenic of them, isn’t it?

I also have a problem with the length of the book; it’s 262 pages. On one hand, the 262 pages is way too long. It shouldn’t take Rivera 262 pages to say, “Americans are afraid of Hispanics because Hispanics are different and different is always feared.”

That’s the essence of it, isn’t it? They’re different. They eat strange, stinky foods, speak a strange language, and have strange, stupid customs. It’s no big insight as to why they’re feared and resented.

Bella Swan loves Edward Cullen in the most desperate way. He’s handsome, mysterious and smart. The catch is, Edward is a vampire – forever frozen at 17 years old. Bella really wants to be a vampire too because what teenage girl wants to be older than her boyfriend? As her birthdays start piling up… well it brings new meaning to the term biological clock.

Add in Bella’s former best friend Jacob who turns out to be Edward’s rival for Bella’s love and as it happens, a werewolf – teenage of course – and you’ve really got a double portion of teenage angst and longing in a tale of suspense and the supernatural.

Michael Palin is best-known for – take your pick: The store proprietor in the Dead Parrot sketch? The priest who blurts out “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!!”? Or any of a half-dozen other memorable Monty Python characters?

It’s hard to say. But Palin has plenty – maybe too much – to say about it all, in his recently published Diaries 1969-79: The Python Years.

For more than 600 pages, Palin amiably recounts his days as the Python phenomenon grew from a group of guys desperately hoping to get some BBC airtime to hobnobbing with celebrities as the new kings of entertainment.

Editor R.V. Branham writes in the introduction to Curse and Berate in 69+ Languages, “Why do people swear? This is asked by Puritans, prudes, & hall monitors. One would more reasonably ask why people don’t swear more often. Mencken said that people are at their most interesting when they are at their worst, & Dorothy Parker asked of those with nothing nice to say that they sit next to her.”

With this in mind, Branham set out to collect naughty words, plundering the brains of people around the world. “So the folders began to grow,” he writes, “with scraps of papers and lists.” Before he knew it, he had a book deal. And thank God, because now there’s a handy reference guide for the world traveler that contains just about everything he needs to know to communicate effectively – such as, say, how to say “Dog Fucker, Goat Fucker, Horse Fucker, Cat Fucker, Sheep Shagger (& Bestial Variations)” in many a language. Yay!

Swear words are strikingly universal, but it’s the extra flourishes within cultures that make this book utterly fascinating. Take the “Asshole/Arsehole (& Variations)” page. In Web-obsessed Korea, where a guy died after a playing an online game for 50 hours, there’s a word for “Internet ass/arsehole”: net hǔng-mun. And while there’s only one Internet asshole entry, there’s a whole host of Internet slut variations -- particularly popular in Croatia -- on the “Cell & Mobile Phones & Lap-Dancing Lap-Tops & Other Crimes Against a Civic Society (& Variations)” page. But back to the “Asshole” page. The Portuguese entry is definitely original: “Yr ass/arsehole’s so huge an aircraft carrier would fit right in.” (If you must know, O seu olho do cú é tão imenso que até um porta-aviões cabe lá dentro.)

In the acknowledgements of American Unzipped: In Search of Sex and Satisfaction, author Brian Alexander (msnbc.com’s “Sexploration” Columnist) thanks his wife first: “My wife, Shelley, deserves an award of some sort. If you have to ask why, you haven’t read this book.” For the project, Alexander set out to discover just how mainstream sexual experimentation has become in America, and in the name of research, he:

• Crouched outside the bedroom of two Internet lovers photographing themselves during sex for online posting;

• Watched a porn shoot that involved a woman with suction devices on her nipples and a steel contraption in her mouth hanging from a hook and being electrocuted;

• Attended a party where people screwed on couches and flogged each other, and a naked woman huddled in a tiny cage looking at him with the beseeching eyes of a dog, because, apparently, she hadn’t “been good.”

If Alexander had gone around the country gleefully getting off as he took notes, this book would have been beyond lame. Instead, he opens up about his Catholic childhood and his own ambivalence toward what he witnesses. He calls himself a “libertarian” when it comes to sex, meaning that he doesn’t judge what happens between consenting adults. But you get the impression he sometimes doesn’t know how to feel about his discoveries, and it’s interesting to see him wrestle with that.

I don’t know much about Harvey Pekar. I’ve never seen American Splendor. I never read his comic book. I know him primarily as a nut job who used to go on David Letterman and make Crispin Glover look sane.

So maybe I’m not the best person in the world to be reviewing his newest book. But the art of reviewing is putting aside prejudices and biases and looking at a work on its own terms. Which brings me to the book at hand, Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History, written by Pekar and various former SDS members, with art work mostly by Gary Dumm.

As the title suggests, this is a book about the radical ‘60s organization known as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). And I’ve got to confess, I found this to be a rather strange read. First there’s the format, a graphic history it’s called. Essentially, it’s a serious historical document done in graphic novel form. Second, there’s the way the story’s told, with the first quarter of the book being a summary of SDS history and the rest consisting of the tales of various SDS members.

The press release accompanying the book refers to this as a sophisticated handbook of a misunderstood organization. But I found it to be a confusing mush of history and art which gives a rather superficial treatment of a rather serious topic.

Brian Howell’s Fame Us: Celebrity Impersonators and the Cult(ure) of Fame is a great coffee table book. I know, because it’s been sitting on mine for a week, and every visitor I’ve had has been unable to resist flipping through the entire thing.

The cover grabs you straight off – it’s a photo of two Mick Jaggers, and everyone’s first impulse is to pick it up and get a closer look, trying to determine which is the real deal. The answer: a shocking “neither.” Both Micks are dead-on doppelgangers of the rocker.

The book starts with a meditation on “The Celebrity Image” that’s interesting enough, but of course the real meat of the book is the photos themselves. There’s an amazing Angelina, a must-see Madonna, a perfect Paris, and a Bono that is, simply Bono. (Isn’t it? Has to be…)

It’s fun to read what they have to say, too. The Johnny Depp look-alike points out that while the star’s a recluse, he’s not, which has interesting consequences. “We [impersonators] actually experience fame on a lot more levels than they do. Sometimes I want to be left alone. But you don’t want to represent your star as a jerk, so there is some responsibility in a weird kind of way.”

The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy, by Robert Leleux, tells the story of what happens to Leleux and his larger-than-life, overbearing mother after his father walks out on them, leaving them in Petunia, Texas with a lot less money than they’re accustomed to.

Robert thinks Mother should get a job, but, as she says, “Going to work just ruins the whole day.” What she needs is a rich man, and her quest, along with Robert’s quest to find himself, is the meat of the story.

It’s fun reading about Robert and his mother’s weekly trips into Houston to get their hair done at Neiman’s in the Galleria, their navigating the freeway system with A/C at full blast, his acting at a North Houston playhouse, and the strangely idyllic time he spent living in an apartment in Huntsville, of all places. Local readers will nod their heads -- wince, perhaps -- reading about Mother’s plastic surgeon, who, after listening to her money woes, says, “Don’t worry, Jessica…The year 2000’s not far off. It won’t be long now ‘til the rapture comes.”

But there’s more reason than the local angle to pick up this book – Leleux is possessed of remarkable wit and timing; in fact, he deserves comparison to David Sedaris.

Photographer Anne Geddes will be at Brazos Bookstore today to sign her new autobiography, A Labor of Love. You know Geddes - she's the one who takes pictures of tiny babies in all sorts of "Awww, isn't that cute?" poses. We thought we'd try our hand at it and took a few photos ourselves. See what you think.