Joe Costanzo

When an old rock hound stumbles across what appears to be the wreckage of a mysterious capsule or cargo pod in Death Valley at the height of the Cold War, a dozen government agencies scramble to unravel its secrets. Is it from a Soviet spy operation or another bungled domestic test like the Roswell fiasco? Frank Sartori, an Atomic Energy Commission physicist, sets out to find out for himself. Guided by map coordinates found on a small metallic disk extracted from the pod, Sartori and an Army Corps of Engineers surveyor called Bobcat track down objects with astonishing magnetic properties that were apparently jettisoned from the capsule as it fell to earth, and they begin to suspect something – or someone – was ejected as well. Their journey across the American Southwest takes them to uncharted territory, to phenomena that defy explanation. Along the way, Sartori discovers a personal connection to the pod, causing him to question his own identity, as well as his sanity. The answer is only the beginning of an odyssey beyond his imagination.

When Jumpin’ Jack, the jackrabbit mascot at Gennesaret Christian College goes missing and a note bearing an enigmatic “(L)” is left at his cage, suspicions immediately focus on the philosophy class of Professor Edward Stathakis.   Citing Aristotle’s treatise De Anima (On the Soul) during one of his lectures, the professor had tacked an (L) onto the end of the word anima to stimulate a Socratic dialogue among his students on the question of whether animals have souls.  Just as the search for the rabbit thief gets underway, a fire destroys the luxurious lodge of billionaire Franklin Scott, an inveterate big game hunter and a major benefactor of the college. Mysteriously, his many big game trophies are found unharmed in the lodge garage, and investigators find (L)s spray painted on the doors.   Edward soon realizes that his simple academic exercise has inflamed imaginations and deep-seated passions that threaten to upend his life and the lives of his students.

After sailing back and forth between Italy and America during the first half of the 20th Century, an unscrupulous “bird of passage” named Tommaso Caruso – or Thomas, as he prefers to be called – disappears Someplace Out West as war erupts in Europe.  After the war ends and there’s still no sign of him, his wife ships their son off to the New World to track him down. Not as keen as his mother to find the old scoundrel, the younger scoundrel – or Tommy as he prefers to be called – dawdles in the Bronx with his three girlfriends until his mother’s rage finally drives him across this vast and incomprehensible continent in search of a man who is running from his wives (plural), the FBI, the CIA, and the mob.     For Tommy, what begins as a simple mission evolves into a disastrous journey of discovery as he and mid-Twentieth Century America collide in The Grand Junction.

  A demoralized American businessman named Stefano Strazzi revisits his birthplace in the mountains of southern Italy, where he succumbs to an ever-deepening, ultimately hopeless enchantment.   Helplessly prolonging his sojourn at the risk of his marriage, he rediscovers illusions of childhood, meddles in a poet’s misguided romance and becomes embroiled in a deadly vendetta a half century old This is the story of a man’s quest for spiritual renewal, a town’s attempt to restore its crumbling medieval church and the forces that conspire against both. The plot weaves an intricate, epic tale of fraud and vengeance gone tragically awry. The novel is set in the fictional Roccamonti, a town on a windswept outcropping of rock along the spine of the Calabrian Apennines. The least known and most unspoiled region of Italy, Calabria occasionally commands the world’s attention with spectacles of calamity and violence. But through history it has also been a sanctuary of intellect and art, nourishing genius and madness alike.

Graphic Times is the story of Anthony Logan, a reporter seeking redemption for a blunder that disrupted a sensational murder trial and set the defendant free. His quest takes him to the red-hot, exo-metro landscape of the New West, where the unrepentant killer, a mysterious apparition, marauding teens, an edgy love interest, and the elements test his resolve. The protagonist is a man who throughout his life has viewed the world through the black-and-white columns of his Times, ever eschewing nuance, color, and ambiguity. But in pursuing the scoop that will restore his reputation, he awakens as if from a dream to a vivid and shifting reality. Perhaps it was the Blessed Virgin Mary in a kayak in the Arizona sky, or his spiky sidekick Jettie, or maybe it was the boulder that a wayward gargoyle dropped on his head while he was romancing Sunday Shaw at the bottom of a slot canyon that transformed him. Whatever the cause, by the end of his journey, he comes to understand what Henry David Thoreau meant by his admonition: “Read not the Times; read the Eternities.”