The joy of finding the small community living in Ophir is soon shattered by the news coming from Houston about the loss of contact with Station Alpha. In fact for more than a day now, no life signs have been detected inside the habitat.
So, together with Jack, Anna sets out for Lunae Planum again. She’s assailed by dread about Robert’s and Hassan’s fate, and also by doubts concerning their involvement in the death of both the Isis mission commander, and most of all, his wife.
However, having to face Michelle’s murderer is only the first of her problems.
Torn between the desire to return to Earth and the ambition of getting the credit for her scientific discoveries, Anna will see her feeble certainties waver several times, until the revelation of a more devious danger concealed by the Red Planet: an invisible enemy, whose mysterious intent menaces her existence and the one of the only person who is still at her side.
The previous books are:
“Red Desert - Point of No Return” (book 1);
“Red Desert - People of Mars” (book 2).
The final book, “Red Desert - Back Home”, will be published next summer.
Follow Anna Persson (@AnnaPerssonDR) on Twitter!
--- This is the third book in a series of four and it ends with a cliffhanger. ---
About the author
Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli is an Italian independent author.
She lives in Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy), where she works as a writer, technical, scientific and literary translator, and web copywriter. She is also a biologist and worked as researcher, tutor, and professor’s assistant in the field of ecology at “Dipartimento di Biologia Animale ed Ecologia” of the University of Cagliari until 2004, when she founded Anakina Web. As part of her firm remit, she manages her creative writing and translation activities, as well as web design and music management.
As a cinema addict, she started by writing screenplays and fan fictions inspired by the movies. She is author of poems in English, published in the United States in anthologies and audiobooks, and has written some song lyrics.
She writes fiction since 2009. In 2011 she completed her first original science fiction novel, which will be published in November 2014 in Italy, and in March 2012 she published “La morte è soltanto il principio”, fantasy novel about ancient Egypt, inspired by the movie “The Mummy”.
Between 2012-2013 she wrote a science fiction series titled “Deserto rosso”, including four books, which are having success in Italy. The whole “Deserto rosso” series was also published as omnibus in December 2013 (ebook and paperback). Thanks to this series, Monticelli was selected in February 2014 as one of the best ten Italian self-published authors by the Italian version of Wired Magazine, was invited to be a speaker at an event during the Salone Internazionale del Libro 2014 in Turin, the most important Italian book fair, and at an event during the Frankfurter Buchmesse 2014.
“Deserto rosso” is now being published in English with the title “Red Desert”, and this is the third book of the series. The first one is “Red Desert – Point of No Return”; the second is “Red Desert – People of Mars”.
She also published a crime thriller, titled “Il mentore”, in May 2014, and another science fiction novel, titled “L’isola di Gaia”, in November 2014, both in Italian.
Since October 2012 she is part of the cast of FantaScientificast, an Italian podcast about science fiction. Since April 2013 she is an Italian Representative of Mars Initiative.
As a science fiction and Star Wars fan, she is known in the Italian online community by her nickname, Anakina.
