Serpentine
Freak out your ophidiophobic friends by proudly placing Serpentine ($30) atop your coffee table. Not a serpentine, mind you, but the 200-page collection of dangerously beautiful photographs from Mark Laita. Including such snakes as the albino Honduran milk snake, the Malaysian coral snake, and Kobe's favorite, the black mamba, the book also contains an essay from novelist William T. Vollmann exploring the various associations with the animals that make them so menacing to so many.