This fall, Deep Sky Anchor Press will release its second book — Hell Moon by Mary E. Lowd! You can pre-order it here.
This space opera horror novel is the first in a new trilogy from Lowd; the Xeno-Spectre trilogy features many of the same defining traits readers love about her other books — spaceships, animal-like aliens, rebellious AI, far future adventure, and queer found family.
The Xeno-Spectre trilogy is set in the same universe as Lowd’s Entangled Universe trilogy from Aethon Books. However, it has a darker edge that will appeal to fans of the Alien franchise, Ghostbusters, and Jurassic Park.
Release date: 9/8/2023
A search and rescue mission on a deserted moon goes wrong when Janice and her crew mates are attacked in the dark abandoned city beneath the surface. Infected by a strange blue energy, Janice doesn’t know how much time they have left, or what will happen when time runs out. The underground ruins crawl with mysterious, scarab-like figures, and even death isn’t a certain escape, when the dead rise as ghostly forms.
The only logical choice is to flee, but the lizard-like aliens paying for the mission insist on forging on. Their secretive agenda and the sordid history of the sentient spaceship who brought them there divide the crew, when they can’t afford to be divided.
Trapped on hell moon, Janice must fight to keep as much of her crew alive as possible while wrestling against impossible odds. The only one who has a clue about how all the pieces tie together is a little girl who survived the last hundred years asleep in her cryo-pod.
On a world where the dead rise as ghosts and multiple civilizations have already been destroyed, solving the mystery of the scarabs might be the only way to survive and escape… HELL MOON.
Books 2 & 3 expected in 2024.