STARGAZERS

IF YOU LOVED PROJECT HAIL MARY, ARRIVAL, OR CONTACT, PREPARE FOR A DIFFERENT KIND OF FIRST CONTACT.A light in the evening sky moves sideways, stops dead, turns ninety degrees, and vanishes. Moments later, a black government car pulls up to the curb.'Dr. Sterling, we need you at the facility.''Which Dr. Sterling?'Both of them.Dr. Adam Sterling is a decorated aerospace engineer and NASA test pilot. His sister, Dr. Nova Sterling, is an astrophysicist whose work in astronomy and navigation has put her on a very short list. Thirty years ago they were two kids with a backyard telescope. Now they’re headed to S-4, the hidden site near Area 51 where the government keeps what it can’t explain.There they find a craft that doesn’t fight gravity. It falls toward it, in any direction it chooses, and nothing is seen when it leaves the ground. The secret to how it works turns out to be sitting in Adam’s hand: the old blue rubber ball that belonged to Astro, their childhood dog, still marked with his teeth and a faded 75-cent sticker.But the craft has a navigator. It isn’t human. It can’t learn our language, and we can’t learn its own. The only bridge between them is Orion, a human-built AI, and what passes across that bridge could change what we know about ourselves.Through all of it, Adam and Nova are still the kids from the backyard, and their family is still behind them.Most people have heard of close encounters of the third kind. Adam and Nova are about to discover the Fifth and Sixth.Written by Dale Edward Holbrook, a U.S. Navy veteran who worked in advanced electronics, electronic warfare and intelligence. He later taught MRI and X-ray systems to engineers, and his years working with magnetic resonance shaped the science in this story. He is also the sculptor of STARGAZERS, a sculpture of Adam, Nova, their dog Astro and their telescope, which inspired this novel. Five-Star Review, Readers’ Favorite