"Scott Carson has another winner on his hands with DEPARTURE 37, an unforgettable novel that very likely will be one of the best of 2025."
Description
“If you loved The Twilight Zone, this is for you. It's a mind-blower.” —Stephen King
Forgotten Cold War mysteries make a terrifying reappearance in this “totally unique and utterly enthralling” (Lisa Unger, New York Times bestselling author) thriller.
Attention, passengers—Flight 37 to nowhere is now boarding.
On a clear October day, the American skies empty after hundreds of pilots refuse to fly, triggering a complete ground stop as authorities seek to explain an act of baffling coordination that the pilots insist was not planned.
While the nation’s military chiefs and artificial intelligence experts mobilize in search of answers, a sixteen-year-old girl named Charlie on the coast of Maine watches a strange silvery balloon drift across the water and toward her new home—a place she loathes. All she wants is to escape back to Brooklyn. She’s about to get much more than that.
Her new home is ground zero for a story that begins at a remote naval base in Indiana during the winter of 1962, when a physicist named Martin Hazelton discovered something extraordinary—and deadly. Experimentation with it was in process when the pressure of the Cold War forced his hand, and his discovery became literally ahead of its time. Now, decades later, its dark potential has come full circle and every second is the enemy. With the future in her hands, only Claire can stop what’s coming.
Reviews
"Rollicking...part Cold War thriller, part Twilight Zone episode and part Stephen King-like yarn about regular people in extraordinary circumstances."
“Scott Carson is one of those rare writers who can grab you on page one, dive deep into his characters, keep you breathless with suspense, and do it all with gorgeous, propulsive prose. The past mingles with the present and the frightening future of technology in DEPARTURE 37, as Carson deftly weaves history, espionage, and horror into something totally unique, and utterly enthralling.”
“Here's a time-travel story that's straight out of The Twilight Zone -- a coming-of-age novel filled with secret government conspiracies, Cold War intrigue, and missing nuclear weapons. Like Rod Serling and Richard Matheson, Scott Carson has a gift for making the most fantastical situations seem entirely plausible, and I was holding my breath throughout this novel's exhilarating sky-high climax.”
