The first question I ask Brian Ray is the big, obvious, elephant-in-the-room question.

Why necrophilia?

Ray, who lives in Greensboro, won praise for his 2009 debut novel, "Through the Pale Door," a dark coming-of-age story. Booklist called him "a talent to watch."

Now he has a second novel - "Unknown Female" (Pink Hill Press; $14.99.) This one is even darker - a gruesome thriller that revolves around an FBI sketch artist working to identify a beautiful young woman found dead near his S.C. childhood home.

The protagonist, Marx Thoreau, seems a mostly decent guy, especially considering he's the son of the most infamous serial killer in South Carolina's history. But he does have one quirk: an attraction to dead women.

"I like to push the envelope," Ray says.

Ray knows his subject matter will repel many readers. But as a writer, he says, he's uninterested in characters with pedestrian problems. Family dysfunction? Alcoholism? "We've seen so much of it," he says.

Ray isn't the first writer to create a hard-to-like protagonist. Look at Humbert Humbert, who becomes sexually involved with a 12-year-old girl in "Lolita." Or Showtime's "Dexter," whose title character works for police as a blood pattern analyst and moonlights as a serial killer.

For "Unknown Female," Ray, 29, drew on work he did at a now-defunct all-crime weekly newspaper. That's where he learned about Pee Wee Gaskins, South Carolina's most infamous serial killer. Gaskins became the inspiration for the novel's serial killer.

Ray lives in Greensboro, where he's an English PhD student teaching at UNC Greensboro.

The sound and the fiction

The Scottish play is now a novel. "Macbeth: A Novel," is a new audiobook co-written by Andrew Hartley, UNC Charlotte's Russell Robinson professor of Shakespeare studies.

Along with being a Shakespeare expert, Hartley writes fiction. As A.J. Hartley, he's author of several historical thrillers and fantasy adventures. Hartley and co-author David Hewson have fleshed out "Macbeth," making it a rich work of historical fiction. Audible.com is publishing it as an audiobook only.

The narrator is Alan Cumming, who appears in CBS's "The Good Wife." It sells for $19.95.