posted 03-20-2025 08:10 PM               

From the author of the international bestseller The Apollo Murders and The Defector: an edge-of-the seat Cold War thriller, set against the backdrop of the real 1970s "space race" between the US, USSR, and China...

1975. A new Apollo mission launches into orbit, on course to dock with a Russian Soyuz craft: three NASA astronauts and three cosmonauts, joining to celebrate a new dawn of Soviet-American cooperation.

But a third power is rising, in the race to dominate space. As NASA Flight Controller Kaz Zemeckis listens in from Earth, three of the six astronauts are killed in a depressurization accident. And from a remote location in east Asia, a capsule secretly launches with China's very first astronaut aboard, purpose unknown...

Full of Cold War intrigue and real historical characters, "Final Orbit" accelerates to a thrilling conclusion – and brings to life the loneliness, majesty and pure rush of space flight, with all of the hard-won experience of a writer who is himself one of the most decorated astronauts alive.

• Hardcover, 368 pages
  
• Mulholland Books (Oct. 7, 2025)
  
• ISBN-10: ‎0316581682
  
• ISBN-13: ‎978-0316581684

posted 10-06-2025 11:20 AM               

Astronaut Chris Hadfield weaves real-life events into alt-history thriller 'Final Orbit'

Astronaut Chris Hadfield is having a really good time rewriting space history.

In his latest novel, "Final Orbit," which hits store shelves on Tuesday (Oct. 7), Hadfield reaches back 50 years to the space missions of the 1970s. Only in his take, some of the events unfold dramatically different.