INTERLOPER

A quarter of a billion kilometers from home, the only crew left is the one who was never supposed to be there.

Nell Varga designed the engine. She was never meant to fly it. Then the mission's propulsion specialist fell ill four months before launch, and Nell found herself strapped into a ship bound for the strangest object ever to enter the solar system: a black, silent spindle four hundred meters long that moves in ways no rock should.

Then a solar storm kills her commander and her pilot during a spacewalk.

Now Nell is alone, with a damaged ship and a ship's computer that barely remembers who it is. Earth is fourteen minutes away by radio. The object is nine days ahead. And it has started to respond.

It shows her pictures. It repairs things she can't. It seems to be trying to say something, and Nell may be the only person alive who can work out what.

But the ship is carrying more than its manifest lists. Someone on Earth has already decided what the object is, and what should be done about it. And the clock is running.

Interloper is a gripping, hopeful first-contact novel about grief, ingenuity and the courage to look at the unknown and ask what it wants. It's for readers who loved Project Hail Mary, The Martian and Children of Time.

Book One of The Interloper Cycle.