Mars One Charlotte Robinson 9780857507341

Alyssa Wright is about to lead the most ambitious space exploration mission in history: a one-way journey to Mars. But two weeks out from launch, she is horribly injured. Left behind on the planet she'd hoped to escape for ever, Alyssa becomes obsessed with the ongoing Mars One mission and uncovers what she believes to be a conspiracy that could put the very lives of her crew at risk.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, a young coder goes missing, leaving behind a cryptic message for his sister, Jia: destroy my hard drives, protect my cat. Forced to flee the violent forces pursuing her, Jia realises that her brother must have uncovered a dark, dangerous secret - and now, Jia is the only person who can save him.

At the same time, millions of kilometres away, as the Argo continues to race towards Mars, the crew must grapple with the emotional fall-out of leaving the rest of their species behind. But when small mistakes and minor malfunctions turn into a disastrous spacewalk, they are forced to ask themselves a terrifying question: is there a saboteur on board?

These three strands collide in a breathless, edge-of-your-seat thrill ride that takes the reader from the besieged city of Hong Kong, across the plastic-choked waters of the North Pacific Gyre, to the barren plains of the Kazakh Steppe, and out into the depths of space, asking: what is the cost of human progress, and are we willing to pay the price?

Charlotte Robinson is a writer and television producer. After graduating from Exeter University with a degree in English, Charlotte started working as a runner in the television industry, where she perfected the art of making teas and coffees on a wide variety of programmes before moving into drama production and becoming a script editor and story producer on shows such as FORTITUDE (Sky), THE TUNNEL (Sky), and Amazon Prime's adaptation of Naomi Alderman's best-selling novel THE POWER. Recently, Charlotte story produced both series of Steven Knight's upcoming A THOUSAND BLOWS for Disney+ and produced the final three episodes of series two.

When she is not producing or working on her own writing, Charlotte is found devouring novels, or playing darts with a pint in hand. She lives in her home county of Essex with her husband and two cats, Merry and Pippin - who have three eyes between them.