Long Dark Dusk (The Australia Trilogy, 2)

As soon as teenaged Chan Aitch learned the horrible truth about life on Australia and its fateful mission, she vowed to save everyone she could from the gangs and cultists fighting for control of the ship's limited resources. Now that Australia has crashed back to Earth, though, her efforts seem to have been in vain: everyone she cares about is dead or in prison.

As one of the few to have survived the ship's return, Chan is now living in poverty on the fringes of a huge city, on a planet she's never known but always dreamed of. She's barely mustering the will to survive when she learns that Mae, the little girl she once rescued on Australia, could be alive. But she has no idea where Mae is, or how to find her. In addition to being alone in an unfamiliar city, Chan has never felt more helpless.

But she'll do whatever it takes to find Mae, even if it means going to prison herself to track the girl down. After all, she's broken out of prison before--how hard could it be to do it on Earth?

James Smythe is the author of Way Down Dark, The Testimony, The Explorer, The Machine, The Echo, and No Harm Can Come to a Good Man. He currently writes a very popular column for The Guardian called "Rereading Stephen King" and teaches Creative Writing in London.