Who or what really killed the young son of Southern Baptist preacher Gareth Holbright? Where do the sympathies of straight-laced military commander John Herman really lie? What’s behind the cover-up of the closed moon colony? And will commitment-phobic Max and ambitious journalist Tina ever reunite? The first book in the Cassiopeia Chronicles, The Right Asteroid is set in the early years of the twenty-second century, when human colonies in space have created the equivalent of a new Wild West. Freedom-loving asteroid hunter Max Julian wants nothing more than to have some fun and make enough money to pay off her space ship, in that order. Instead, what she’d thought was her last-chance asteroid turns out to be an alien probe – and Max makes first contact, setting off a chain of events that will change human life on earth, the moon, and Mars forever. Along the way, Max joins forces with an unlikely new team of human friends to save the lives of a half-million geometry-loving, high-tech aliens who call themselves the Kurool. But EarthGov will stop at nothing to prevent the aliens from settling on Mars. Meet Max’s friends: Lodan Greenfellow, an inquisitive agronomist, wants to understand the mystery of the aliens on Mars, but EarthGov wants to destroy the aliens and anyone who gets in their way. She might be in their cross hairs. Gareth Holbright, a grieving Southern Baptist minister, wants to mourn the loss of his son, but finds himself embroiled in the political race for the new EarthGov president and on the opposite side from his anti-alien brother. Tina Fiorici, an intrepid journalist for the New York Times, wants to write the real story about what’s happening with the aliens on Mars and about the burgeoning movement for independence. But the EarthGov doesn’t want the truth to get out. John Herman, a straight-laced military commander, just wants to keep his career on track, but learning what EarthGov has planned for the aliens makes him willing to risk it all.