The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black

Description

“Disturbingly lovely . . . The Resurrectionist is itself a cabinet of curiosities, stitching history and mythology and sideshow into an altogether different creature. Deliciously macabre and beautifully grotesque.”—Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus This macabre tale—part dark fantasy, part Gray’s Anatomy—tells the chilling story of a man driven mad by his search for the truth, with hypnotic and horrifying images. Philadelphia, the late 1870s. A city of gas lamps, cobblestone streets, and horse-drawn carriages—and home to the controversial surgeon Dr. Spencer Black. The son of a grave robber, young Dr. Black studies at Philadelphia’s esteemed Academy of Medicine, where he develops an unconventional hypothesis: that the mythological beasts of legend and lore—including mermaids, minotaurs, and satyrs—were in fact humanity's evolutionary ancestors. And beyond that, he wonders: what if there was a way for humanity to reach the fuller potential these ancestors implied? The Resurrectionist offers two extraordinary books in one. The first part is a fictional biography of Dr. Spencer Black, from his childhood spent exhuming corpses through his medical training, his travels with carnivals, his cruel and crazed experiments, and, finally, his mysterious disappearance. The second part is Black’s magnum opus: The Codex Extinct Animalia, a Gray’s Anatomy for mythological beasts, all rendered in meticulously detailed anatomical illustrations. Cover Other Books by This Author Title Page Copyright Epigraph A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF DR. SPENCER BLACK 1851–1868: CHILDHOOD 1869: THE ACADEMY OF MEDICINE 1870: WARD C 1871–1877: MARRIAGE AND TRANSFORMATION 1878: THE FAWN-CHILD 1879–1887: THE AMERICAN CARNIVAL 1888–1908: THE HUMAN RENAISSANCE THE CODEX EXTINCT ANIMALIA SPHINX ALATUS SIREN OCEANUS SATYRUS HIRCINUS MINOTAURUS ASTERION GANESHA ORIENTIS CHIMÆRA INCENDIARIUS CANIS HADES PEGASUS GORGONIS DRACONIS ORIENTIS CENTAURUS CABALLUS HARPY ERINYES A Final Note