Dana Kollmann

Dana Kollmann examines ancient skulls on the weekends, teaches anthropology during the week, and her four young children can sum up their mother's passion in three words: "Mama studies bones."

She has had a dead man's finger in her mouth. She also has been covered in bugs. She interviewed a pig and a man who carried on extensive conversations with his imaginary wife. Kollmann spent 10 years as a crime-scene investigator in Baltimore County, and her debut book, Never Suck a Dead Man's Hand: Curious Adventures of a CSI, recounts these and other strange and occasionally harrowing situations that accompany the job.