Description

When kids begin to disappear, Mars Patel and his friends try to discover why—and find themselves pitted against a brilliant, enigmatic billionaire—in a novel based on the Peabody Award–winning podcast.

Mars Patel’s friend Aurora has disappeared! His teachers are clueless. His mom is stressed out about her jobs. But Mars refuses to give up—after all, his own dad disappeared when Mars was a toddler, before he and Ma moved to Puget Sound from India. Luckily, Mars has a group of loyal friends eager to help—smart Toothpick, strong and stylish JP, and maybe-telepathic Caddie. The clues seem to point toward eccentric tech genius (and Mars’s hero) Oliver Pruitt, whose popular podcast now seems to be commenting on their quest! But when the friends investigate Pruitt’s mysterious, elite school, nothing is as it seems—and anyone could be deceiving them. Slick science, corporate conspiracies, and an endearingly nerdy protagonist make this first book in the series a fresh, exciting sci-fi adventure.

• This action-packed, sci-fi middle grade series is based on a Peabody-award-winning podcast that the New York Times called “the ‘Serial’ of children’s podcasts”
• With an Indian-American main character and a gender fluid secondary character, this series brings welcome diversity to the sci-fi genre
• Tackling drones, bio-engineering, the corporatization of schools, and other hot button concerns, this series feels very timely in its details yet classic in its friends-against-the-world plot