Burning — Alan Smale

On July 4, 1983, Vivian Carter and her NASA crew of seven set off on an audacious double flyby of Venus and Mars, a two-year mission with repurposed Apollo technology that will push their ingenuity and resourcefulness to the limit. Meanwhile, superpower conflicts escalate on Earth, mirrored by a dangerously unstable arms race and battles for valuable mineral resources on the Moon. Full-up lunar military actions and treacherous sneak attacks decimate Vivian's friends, allies and colleagues on both sides of the Iron Curtain and threaten everything she has worked to achieve.Vivian's odyssey is a high adventure that will bring mankind new knowledge and unimagined insights … just as the risk of worldwide nuclear war has never been greater. Now, on her triumphant return in 1985, Vivian Carter's path inevitably brings her back to where she began: a desperate rescue mission with no NASA support and no safety net, to a dangerous, war-torn Moon where she will be hard pressed to tell friend from foe.In the concluding volume of Alan Smale's highly acclaimed Apollo Rising series (A nail-biting thriller.−Publishers Weekly) humanity faces a stark choice: a bright new interplanetary future … or nuclear apocalypse on two worlds.