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Past mysteries reappear in this terrifying tale in which forgotten Cold War secrets make a disturbing reappearance, from a writer Stephen King has called "a master."
On a clear October day, the American skies empty after hundreds of pilots refuse to fly, triggering a complete ground stop as authorities seek to explain an act of baffling coordination that the pilots insist was anything but planned. The pilots received disturbing, middle-of-the-night calls from their mothers, and each mother had a simple and urgent request: do not fly today.
There are a few concerning elements to the calls. None of the mothers remember making them-and some of the mothers are dead.
While the nation's military chiefs and artificial intelligence experts mobilize in search of answers, a sixteen-year-old girl named Charlie on the coast of Maine watches a strange, silvery balloon drift across the water and toward her home-a place she loathes. Her father's dream of opening a craft brewery on an old airfield has been a disaster, and all she wants is an escape back to Brooklyn.
She's about to get much more than that.
Her new home is ground zero for a story that begins at a remote naval base in Indiana during the winter of 1962, when a physicist named Martin Hazelton discovered something extraordinary-and deadly. All Hazelton wanted was time to seek an explanation, but pressure from both American and Russian actors forced him into a perilous race.
Moving between the two characters and timelines, Scott Carson deftly weaves Cold War espionage with contemporary terror in a story that explains why #1 New York Times bestseller Joe Hill has declared himself "a fan for life." Scott Carson is the pseudonym of Michael Koryta, a New York Times bestselling author whose work has been translated into more than twenty languages, adapted into major motion pictures, and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A former private investigator and reporter, his writing has been praised by Stephen King, Michael Connelly, and Dean Koontz, among many others. Raised in Bloomington, Indiana, he now lives in Indiana and Maine.
On a clear October day, the American skies empty after hundreds of pilots refuse to fly, triggering a complete ground stop as authorities seek to explain an act of baffling coordination that the pilots insist was anything but planned. The pilots received disturbing, middle-of-the-night calls from their mothers, and each mother had a simple and urgent request: do not fly today.
There are a few concerning elements to the calls. None of the mothers remember making them-and some of the mothers are dead.
While the nation's military chiefs and artificial intelligence experts mobilize in search of answers, a sixteen-year-old girl named Charlie on the coast of Maine watches a strange, silvery balloon drift across the water and toward her home-a place she loathes. Her father's dream of opening a craft brewery on an old airfield has been a disaster, and all she wants is an escape back to Brooklyn.
She's about to get much more than that.
Her new home is ground zero for a story that begins at a remote naval base in Indiana during the winter of 1962, when a physicist named Martin Hazelton discovered something extraordinary-and deadly. All Hazelton wanted was time to seek an explanation, but pressure from both American and Russian actors forced him into a perilous race.
Moving between the two characters and timelines, Scott Carson deftly weaves Cold War espionage with contemporary terror in a story that explains why #1 New York Times bestseller Joe Hill has declared himself "a fan for life." Scott Carson is the pseudonym of Michael Koryta, a New York Times bestselling author whose work has been translated into more than twenty languages, adapted into major motion pictures, and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A former private investigator and reporter, his writing has been praised by Stephen King, Michael Connelly, and Dean Koontz, among many others. Raised in Bloomington, Indiana, he now lives in Indiana and Maine.
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Reviews
"Narrators Mia Barron, Johnny Heller, and Catherine Ho help listeners navigate the complex plot of this conspiracy thriller. The story, which shifts between the present day and 1962, starts with a mysterious series of phone calls that ground hundreds of flights across the nation. Sixteen-year-old Charlie, whose grandfather was a military pilot, finds herself drawn into the mystery because of remnants of a military plane near her home in Maine. Complications include a cover-up involving AI, unearthed secrets of the Cold War, and a Government research facility. The narration requires an impressive range of voices and mannerisms, including intentionally bad AI renditions of famous people. The pace is breakneck, and the clever ending opens up questions that may have to be answered in a sequel. L.W.S. � AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine"
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