When one of their closest allies disappears, without a trace and in impossible circumstances, the Maverick Heart crew is soon on the trail. But they're already at a disadvantage, for one of their own has gone missing too, leaving them with only the merest of clues to unravel the mystery.

The race is on to solve the baffling disappearances, running from the loneliest, coldest corners of space into the heart of human civilization. And beyond.

Now it's up to Vrick and the crew to find out who's pulling the strings and bring the lost home safely. If they can.

For their investigation soon reveals that they and their vanished friends are merely pawns in a vast and diabolical plot that threatens to tear through worlds across the Pan Galactum and across the walls of reality itself.

Stephen Graham King (He/They) is a disabled survivor of metastatic synovial sarcoma, a story chronicled in the memoir, Just Breathe: My Journey Through Cancer and Back. Since then, he has concentrated on writing speculative fiction, in particular, queer-themed space opera, and his short fiction has appeared in the anthologies North of Infinity II, Desolate Places, Ruins Metropolis,and the Aurora Award winning Nothing Without Us Too. His first novel, Chasing Cold, was released in 2012, followed by the books in the Maverick Heart Cycle: Soul's Blood (2016), Gatecrasher (2017), A Congress of Ships (2019) and in 2022 Ghost Light Burn. He has been a frequent guest on podcasts and panels, passionately advocating for lived experience queer and disability narratives in stories of the future. They are also an avid black and white photographer, with two of their photos appearing in an installation at the Art Gallery of Ontario. They are also working on a book compiling their intimate and immediate photos captured on the streets of Toronto, where they currently reside.

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