If you've ever wondered what happens to your body after you die, then Melanie King's first book is a good place to find out. In The Dying Game: The Curious History of Death, she looks at all the things that can happen to a corpse - whether biological, cultural, ethical or legal. And it's really rather fascinating stuff.

Macabre? Sometimes, but Melanie has pitched the tone well. Apart from the odd, humorous aside, this is a respectful, well-researched book that entertains and informs in equal measure.

Melanie, 46, has had an eclectic career; the kind that's perfect training for becoming a writer. After studying international relations at Sussex University, she went to Thailand for two years, working with refugees on the Thai/Laos border and as a journalist. On her return, she did a master's degree at the refugees studies programme at St Antony's College in Oxford, before working as a volunteer with victims of torture for six months. She now lives in Oxford with her husband, the writer Ross King. "I got totally burnt out," she said. She learnt a lot about torture and human nature and says it will all come out in a novel one day.

So what made her want to write a book about death? "The idea started as a book on grief," she explained. Her mother had recently died and she was looking for something that would help her. "What I found when I worked through my own grief was that I was actually fascinated with how we all deal with death and then, from that, I became more fascinated with different cultures and how they deal with death."

She says this is not really a book for someone who has just been bereaved. One can quite see why, as "factual" does sometimes mean "grisly", but it is never gratuitous. "If you're the kind of person that likes CSI, or you're interested in quirky facts and are interested in what happens to you, not just the physical things, but the idea of what happens to the soul, then this book is for you," she said.

She has received two different responses. "There would be the one camp who liked CSI, the gruesome stuff - and it was usually the woman - and then there was another group of people who just didn't want to talk about it." She thinks they might subconsciously be worried about their own mortality. But then death is a taboo subject in our society. She thinks that stems in part from a fear of being buried alive, otherwise known as taphephobia.

In the first chapter, she talks about what people have done throughout the ages to avoid that happening. In Germany, for example, from the late 1700s to the mid-1800s they had Leichenhäuser, where the bodies were not interred until they began to rot. Meanwhile, various ingenious entrepreneurs and medics worked out foolproof ways to ensure you were actually dead or how to attract attention should you be buried alive in a coffin.

In the book she debunks the myth that people could have survived days underground in coffins. "If you were accidentally buried alive, you'd only live for an hour, as I showed from research," she said. In this country, it is less likely to happen anyway, as up to 70 per cent of us are cremated these days.

Two Oxford figures are mentioned in the book - the artist and writer Ted Dewan, who offered to donate his head for shrinking to the Pitt Rivers Museum, when it was suggested that the popular shrunken heads should be removed. The other is Philip Pullman, creator of The Golden Compass, who had his stepfather's cremains loaded into 40 rockets and ignited on the Forth of Firth. He has said this is how he would like to go.

Both cases point up how cultural ideas about corpses are changing, although it's unlikely that the UK will ever legalise eating relatives, which is what the Wari tribe in Brazil did. For them it signified respect. "The thought of burying them was absolutely horrendous," Melanie said. "They would be in the earth; they'd be cold."

How did writing this book affect her own ideas about death? "I don't think I'm afraid of it, although I don't want to die prematurely," she said. She became very interested in what happens to the body physically, something her husband found strange.

I have to admit that part made me feel rather sick, although I was trying to eat dinner at the time I read it. My advice would be not to do the same.

But do go to her talk at the Oxford Literary Festival on April 3, where she will be talking about fear of dying, among other things. It's going to happen to you one day - why not tackle the idea head-on?