Body parts are big business in the United States. Tissue organs tendons bones joints limbs hands feet torsos and heads culled from the dead are the cornerstones of the lucrative and important business of advancing scientific knowledge and improving medical technique. Few people however think to ask where the material that sustains this enormous industry comes from. Journalist Annie Cheney is a timely exception. In Body Brokers: Inside America’s Underground Trade in Human Remains (Broadway) Cheney chronicles her quest to find out how human remains are procured processed marketed and used. It’s a complicated detailed and disturbing tale.