Thirty years after man's first lunar landing, retired NASA engineer Homer Hickam, Jr., offers a brilliantly imagined, endlessly entertaining return to space adventure in his spectacular first novel, Back to the Moon. In his bestselling memoir, Rocket Boys, Hickam memorably evoked our captivation with our nation's first halting ventures into space. Now he reminds us of the long-lost wonder with which we once watched America's conquest of the moon -- and celebrated the triumph of mind, soul, and spirit that got us there -- in this page-turning tale of the first moon shot of the new millennium.

Jack Medaris doesn't "borrow" the space shuttle Columbia to be a hero or a villain. A man of science driven by the memory of the woman who once inspired him, Jack risks his life, his name, and everything he has, to sidetrack the shuttle crew and take her on an unscheduled detour to the moon, where the secrets of his past--and the future of the world -- await him. But when the meticulously plotted launch goes fatally wrong, and payload specialist Penny High Eagle further complicates Jack's plan, he must confront unforeseen challenges both in space and on the ground, where deadly forces are amassing to prevent the Columbia from reaching the moon.

Writing with the detail and intelligence that only an insider could have, Hickam takes us to places few have ever seen, strapping us into the cockpit of the shuttle and hurtling us into orbit and beyond. From the crackling tension of mission control to the savage emptiness of deep space, from the massive rocket engines capable of generating millions of pounds of thrust to the tiny...