The Talpiot Find - Tapa blanda

Review of John Evan Garvey's Secreta Corporis by MICHAEL NAVA, author of the Henry Rios novels--which were praised as "an exceptional series" by the New York Times--and the historical novel, The City of Palaces:
Secreta Corporis is, in the tradition of The Name of the Rose, a marvelously erudite novel that brings the past to life in all its complexity while engaging the reader's sympathy in the love story of Rolant and Audric, Knights Templar, as they travel in and around the Holy Land at the end of the 12th century. Garvey's book immerses the reader in Rolant and Audric's world while never losing sight of the deep bond between them that is the heart of the story. This is not the cartoon version of the past readers get in so many historical novels but a rich and detailed landscape in which the reader can happily lose him- or herself. I highly recommend it.

Synopsis: The Talpiot Find follows a grad student from Los Angeles doing his fieldwork in archaeology at a dig site in Jerusalem's Talpiot neighborhood, not far from the location of the alleged Jesus ossuary. While excavating a twelfth-century well, he uncovers ancient clay tablets that turn out, unexpectedly, to be important enough, for certain people, to kill for. Right next to the tablets in the soil is the skeleton of what looks like a murder victim. It seems that the tablets have been associated with murder ever since they were created. But who created them? And why?

More information is available at carpecranium.com/thetalpiotfind

John Evan Garvey is an artisanal publisher who loves the whole process of researching and writing a book, typesetting it with unique touches, designing the covers, and creating promotional materials like video trailers, webpages and ads. It's an artistic process that blends visual arts with creative writing and social-media technology to create a something, a gestaltic virtual 'thing' that traditional publishing can't quite match, because traditional publishers leave the artisan's soul out of the corporate process. Each book he creates is a canvas, a sculpture, he's painstakingly worked into its final form. John is originally from southern New Jersey, a small town named Vineland after the Norse Vikings' name for North America, Vinland, and where the grape-juice company, Welch's, was founded in 1869. John's upbringing was conservative evangelical, and his educational background reflects that. In his early 30s, he stepped outside of faith, creating a rift between himself and his family and friends, which is still in place. It's because of this dramatic change in world-view and the resultant separation from his extended family that John's writing so often probes the nature of faith and the unfamiliar realm of non-faith. He has a desire to share what he's learned and to continue learning about the mystifying realms of particle physics and the cosmos. He lives in Burbank, California.