It's 2312 and Leo Fischer is a fifteen-year-old computer whizz on his first ever journey off Earth. He's heading to the moon colony to help his mother Lillian with her scientific work. But before he can reach her, she is kidnapped. Determined to find and rescue her, Leo has no choice but to accept the help of his newest friend, Skater Monroe, the daughter of a shuttle pilot and already an experienced space traveller. Their investigation leads them to an old freighter captain with a strange story about two spaceships: one a long-lost piece of junk called the Arcadian; the other, a sleek, ultra-modern ship of mysterious origin. Both craft are involved in some kind of cover-up, and Leo and Skater become convinced the conspirators are the same people who kidnapped Leo's mother. Dodging space pirates as well as a ruthless assassin in the pay of the soon-to-be president of Mars, they stumble upon a secret that could lead to all-out war in the solar system. The first instalment of Andrew Stickland's Mars Alone Trilogy is a gravity-defying thrill-ride into the human race's all-too-believable future in space.