Monument Books
One small handwritten letter, sent from a distant corner of the planet and lost in the system for sixty years... is about to change the entire human race. Outside Denver, Colorado, Joe Rickards stands over a small aircraft wreckage, studying burnt remains still smoldering in a field of freshly fallen snow...an investigator for the NTSB, working to carefully roll back the last several hours and identify the cause of the accident. But this time, he can't. The details behind this tragedy don't add up. Unlike every other investigation of Joe's career, the facts make no sense. Each new piece of information only makes the accident more mysterious, and more baffling. Why would a person receive an age-old letter and suddenly disappear into the thick of night...paying to be flown out of a closed airport in the worst possible weather conditions, by a pilot who hadn't had his hand on the stick in years? With the only surviving relative insisting her grandfather would never have climbed into a small airplane in the first place, even in perfect weather. A bizarre string of events culminating in a horrible accident unlike anything Rickards has experienced. Leaving his only hope at understanding it in the hands of the victim's sole remaining relative. Beginning with how a mysterious letter could turn up after being lost in the system for sixty years. Sent by someone who should have already been long dead. A single letter, Joe Rickards is about to discover, with a secret that will change the entire world.
One of mankind's greatest secrets... has been hiding in plain sight for three thousand years. Half a century ago, an aberration was spotted by one of our earliest satellites, and summarily dismissed as a hardware malfunction. But it was no aberration. And no malfunction. It was an accidental glimpse of something extraordinary, and very old. Mocked for decades, the man who designed the satellite is now dead. With the system's original data firmly in the hands of former NTSB investigator Joe Rickards and anthropologist Angela Reed. But the data is only to be shared with one other person besides them: a seventy-five-year-old NASA engineer who was part of the original program. Joe Rickards is convinced it will lead mankind into darkness. Angela believes it may be the answer the modern world has been longing for. And former NASA engineer Leonard Townsend hasn't the slightest idea what he's about to get involved in. To make matters worse, through a strange bedside confession, a journalist thousands of miles away has just learned that someone else already knows about the satellite's fifty-year-old discovery. Because they've been secretly using it for years.