<p> <b><i>69 unseen artifacts from the world's best museums. </i></b> </p><p> <b><i>The Secret Museum</i></b> is a unique treasure trove of the most intriguing artifacts hidden away in museum archives from all over the world, curated, brought to light and to life by Molly Oldfield in a beautifully illustrated collection. </p><p> Most of a museum's holdings are never seen. Artifacts too fragile to be handled or exposed, too likely to be stolen or too big to display, sit in secure darkness waiting for a treasure hunter or obsessive researcher to rediscover them. In Manhattan, priceless books sit on shelves built under busy streets; at the Museum of Sacred Art in Brazil a 17th century bejeweled processional cross is squirreled away under the floor; body bags in Washington hide spacesuits covered in moon dust; and in an unvisited aircraft hangar sits Auguste Piccard's extraordinary invention, the balloon gondola. </p><p> This and many other extraordinary inventions, legacies, discoveries and artifacts have been visited and curated by Molly Oldfield into <b><i>The Secret Museum</i></b>. Rich in atmosphere and anecdote, suffused with the surprising emotion of personal discovery, but grounded in fascinating factual detail, this is a unique and beautifully illustrated guide to the world's most fascinating hidden treasures. </p><p> <b><i>The Secret Museum</i></b> reveals sixty-nine unknown artifacts bearing stories from all five continents, from Rome to Rio and Boston to Berlin. Many cannot be photographed for fear of reproduction, in which case sketches reveal details. The treasures include:<br> <ul> <li> An original Gutenberg Bible printed on vellum in the Morgan Library and Museum, New York City</li> <li> A piece of Newton's apple tree at the Royal Society in London, England</li> <li> Van Gogh's sketchbooks at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam</li> <li> Charles Dickens' feline letter opener at the New York Public Library</li> <li> Vladimir Nabokov's cabinet of butterfly genitalia at Harvard University</li> <li> Logbook of the Kon-Tiki expedition in the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo, Norway</li> <li> Livingstone and Stanley's hats at the Royal Geographical Society in London, UK</li> <li> Slap-soled shoes owned by Queen Elizabeth I in the Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, Canada</li> <li> Christmas telegram from double agent Little Fritz aka Agent Zigzag, at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, England, the top secret World War II MI6 decoding location. </li> </ul> </p><p> Like the very best mornings spent at a museum, <b><i>The Secret Museum</i></b> promises to be idiosyncratic, surprising and enormously good fun. </p>