The Monument Series

Outside Denver, Joe Rickards stands over a small aircraft wreckage, studying burnt remains still smoldering in a field of freshly fallen snow...an investigator for the NTSB, working to carefully roll back the last several hours and identify the cause of the accident. But this time, he can't. The details behind this tragedy don't add up. Unlike every other investigation of Joe's career, the facts make no sense. Each new piece of information only makes the accident more mysterious, and more baffling.

One small handwritten letter, sent from a dark, remote corner of the planet and lost in the system for 60 years, is about to change the entire human race. Outside Denver, Colorado, Joe Rickards stands over a small aircraft wreckage, studying burnt remains still smoldering in a field of freshly fallen snow. He's an investigator for the NTSB, working to carefully roll back the last several hours and identify the cause of the accident. But this time, he can't.

Half a century ago, an aberration was spotted by one of our earliest satellites, and summarily dismissed as a hardware malfunction. But it was no aberration. And no malfunction. It was an accidental glimpse of something extraordinary, and very old. Mocked for decades, the man who designed the satellite is now dead. With the system's original data firmly in the hands of former NTSB investigator Joe Rickards and anthropologist Angela Reed.

Half a century ago, an aberration was spotted by one of our earliest satellites, and summarily dismissed as a hardware malfunction. But it was no aberration. And no malfunction. It was an accidental glimpse of something extraordinary, and very old. Mocked for decades, the man who designed the satellite is now dead. With the system's original data firmly in the hands of former NTSB investigator Joe Rickards and anthropologist Angela Reed.