The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black

<div> <p><strong>An extraordinary biography. A gallery of astonishing work. The legacy of a madman.</strong> </p> <p>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: What if the world’s most celebrated mythological beasts—mermaids, minotaurs, and satyrs—were in fact the evolutionary ancestors of humankind? </p> <p><em>The Resurrectionist</em> offers two extraordinary books in one. The first is a fictional biography of Dr. Spencer Black, from a childhood spent exhuming corpses through his medical training, his travels with carnivals, and the mysterious disappearance at the end of his life. The second book is Black’s magnum opus: <em>The Codex Extinct Animalia</em> , a <em>Gray’s Anatomy</em> for mythological beasts—dragons, centaurs, Pegasus, Cerberus—all rendered in meticulously detailed anatomical illustrations. You need only look at these images to realize they are the work of a madman. <em>The Resurrectionist</em> tells his story.</p></div>