First Contact stories have never been as intoxicating and fun as in Emily Jane's novel of the sudden arrival--and equally sudden departure--of spaceships above Earth.

 

The arrival of spaceships can bring up a lot of big questions:

 

What does it mean that we're not alone?

 

Why did aliens come here?

 

Who knew beforehand?

 

Where.... are the aliens going?

 

Wait... They can't just leave! Without inviting us into their galactic federation--or at the very least obliterating us!

 

In Emily Jane's debut--a rollicking paean to what it means to be alive in the twenty-first century--the fleeting presence of alien vessels, and the certainty that humans are not alone in the universe, sparks intense uncertainty as to our place within it.

 

Blaine has always been content to go along with whatever his supermom wife and television-addicted, half-feral children want. But when the kids blithely ponder skinning "hoomans" to uncover aliens, and his wife announces a surprise road trip to Disney World, even steady Blaine begins to crack.

 

Heather, bored in a Malibu pool while the ships hover overhead, watches as the Arrival heralds the end of her dead-end relationship and sets her on a quest to understand herself, her accomplished (and oh-so-annoying) stepfamily, and why she feels so alone in a universe teeming with life.

 

And Oliver, suddenly conscious and alert after twenty catatonic years, struggles to piece together broken memories and understand why he's following a strange cat on a westward journey and into the greatest adventure of his--or anyone's--lifetime.