After the events on Antares, the first official contact between Humans and the Tsalterian civilisation can take place on Aldebaran. Limited in scope, it is to involve only two groups of scientists studying a mysterious structure of unknown origin – all under the aegis of Kim, the only ambassador the aliens are willing to accept. A situation that’s not to everyone’s taste on the Human side ... But as things threaten to take a wrong turn, Marie, one of the survivors brought to Aldebaran by Sven the Tsalterian, suddenly intervenes ......

Kim’s team has travelled through the quantum gate inside the mysterious cube, and begun exploring the planet on the other side, but soon the expedition loses a member: Marie vanishes, abducted by an unknown human. Her teammates will do anything in their power to find her, but they lack resources, and Kim returns to Aldebaran to obtain some. Unfortunately, the political situation on her home planet is quickly deteriorating, and the terrorists are still bent on harming her and her work.

Humanity migrates to a new planet, the secrets of which Kim Keller will have to unravel. After the failure of the Betelgeuse colonisation mission, Kim is back on Earth, where she is an increasingly popular figure. Meanwhile, advance scouts on planet Antares have witnessed some distressingly strange events. Worried about the future of this new mission, the sponsors of the Antares project call upon Kim to accompany the first colonists, offering legal amnesty for Alexa and Mark in exchange. It’s the beginning of a new adventure for the young woman and her friends.

After three years of study and training, Marie is now officially a member of the UN Special Forces. But she’s barely had time to celebrate her graduation when an extraordinary event forces her to leave for her first mission: an alien ship of unknown origin has just arrived in orbit of Earth. As no contact can be established with its crew, Marie and her team are sent to board the vessel and investigate ...

I’M LOST. I’M SCARED. AND THERE’S SOMETHING HORRIBLE IN HERE. My name is Gary Rendell. I’m an astronaut. When they asked me as a kid what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said, “astronaut, please!” I dreamed astronaut, I worked astronaut, I studied astronaut. I got lucky; when a probe exploring the Oort Cloud found a strange alien rock and an international team of scientists was put together to go and look at it, I made the draw. I got even luckier. When disaster hit and our team was split up, scattered through the endless cold tunnels, I somehow survived. Now I’m lost, and alone, and scared, and there’s something horrible in here. Lucky me. Lucky, lucky, lucky. A new standalone novella by the Arthur C Clarke Award-winning author of Children of Time.

The mysterious cube on Aldebaran was destroyed by a terrorist, along with the quantum gate that allowed passage to a new world – stranding Kim and her team on the other side. At least, they did manage to find – and befriend - the intruder who’d kidnapped Marie. Meeting his people, Kim discovers that the planet has recently begun being plagued by strange phenomena. What is the young woman going to find out – and what sort of impact will it have on Humanity’s future?

“A dense and scholarly book about . . . the relationship between the Nazi party and the occult . . . reveals stranger-than-fiction truths on every page.”—Daily Telegraph The Nazi fascination with the occult is legendary, yet today it is often dismissed as Himmler’s personal obsession or wildly overstated for its novelty. Preposterous though it was, however, supernatural thinking was inextricable from the Nazi project. The regime enlisted astrology and the paranormal, paganism, Indo-Aryan mythology, witchcraft, miracle weapons, and the lost kingdom of Atlantis in reimagining German politics and society and recasting German science and religion. In this eye-opening history, Eric Kurlander reveals how the Third Reich’s relationship to the supernatural was far from straightforward. Even as popular occultism and superstition were intermittently rooted out, suppressed, and outlawed, the Nazis drew upon a wide variety of occult practices and esoteric sciences to gain power, shape propaganda and policy, and pursue their dreams of racial utopia and empire. “[Kurlander] shows how swiftly irrational ideas can take hold, even in an age before social media.”—The Washington Post “Deeply researched, convincingly authenticated, this extraordinary study of the magical and supernatural at the highest levels of Nazi Germany will astonish.”—The Spectator “A trustworthy [book] on an extraordinary subject.”—The Times “A fascinating look at a little-understood aspect of fascism.”—Kirkus Reviews “Kurlander provides a careful, clear-headed, and exhaustive examination of a subject so lurid that it has probably scared away some of the serious research it merits.”—National Review