Point of No Return

Anna left at dawn.
She entered the Martian desert, all alone.
Where is she going?
What secret is she hiding?

Thirty years after the Mars exploration mission Hera, whose crew died in mysterious circumstances, the ensuing political issues that slowed NASA's race to conquer space have finally ended. This time the five members of the new Isis mission will not travel the 400 million kilometres for a short visit. This time they are destined to become the first colonisers of the Red Planet.

The science fiction series "Red Desert", set in the near future, includes four books.
This is the first one, "Point of No Return".

In what looks like a suicide attempt, Swedish exobiologist Anna Persson, crew member of the Isis, secretly leaves Station Alpha at the crack of dawn to travel deep into the Martian desert in a pressurised rover.
As she journeys to the limit of her two day oxygen supply, she shows us memories of events from her past leading up to the mission. Little by little, as time and oxygen run out, she reveals the real Anna.
Whatever her goal, wherever it is, will Anna reach her destination?

The second book is "Red Desert - People of Mars" (a novel).

Follow Anna Persson (AnnaPerssonDR) on Twitter!


--- This is the first book in a series of four and it ends with a cliffhanger. ---

This book is written in British English.

Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli is an Italian science fiction and thriller author.
She has lived in Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy) since 1993, earning a degree in biology and working as a writer, scientific and literary translator. In the past she also worked as researcher, tutor and professor's assistant in the field of ecology at "Dipartimento di Biologia Animale ed Ecologia" of the University of Cagliari.

She has written fiction since 2009.
Between 2012-2013, she published a hard science fiction series set on Mars: Deserto rosso. 
The Deserto rosso series, which includes four books, was also published as omnibus in December 2013 (ebook and paperback) and hit No. 1 on the Italian Kindle Store in November 2014.

Deserto rosso was published in English, with the title Red Desert, between 2014-2015.

She also authored four thrillers, Il mentore (2014), Affinità d'intenti (2015), Sindrome (2016), and Oltre il limite (2017); five more science fiction novels, L'isola di Gaia (2014), Per caso (2015), Ophir. Codice vivente (2016), Sirius. In caduta libera (2018) and Nave stellare Aurora (2020); and a non-fiction book, Self-publishing lab. Il mestiere dell'autoeditore (2020).

Il mentore was published in English by AmazonCrossing as The Mentor on 1 November 2015 and was an Amazon Bestseller (#1 on the Kindle Store in the USA, UK, and Australia in 2015). A second edition of The Mentor was published in 2022.
Sindrome and Oltre il limite are available in English as Syndrome and Beyond the Limit (2023).
Affinità d'intenti is also available in English as Kindred Intentions (2016).

She is podcaster and blogger at FantaScientifiCast, an Italian Representative at Mars Initiative, and a member of the International Thriller Writers organisation.
She's often a guest both in Italy and abroad during book fairs, including Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino (Turin), Frankfurter Buchmesse and Più Libri Più Liberi (Rome), publishing events, university conferences as well as classes.