Across the Universe

Stardust Beach Book Five

He’s trained to survive the deadliest conditions in space.

But no one prepared him for the silence at home.

Lieutenant Colonel Bill Booker is a decorated pilot, a respected astronaut, and a man unraveling by degrees. Beneath the surface of his perfect American life—his rising NASA career, his beautiful wife Jo, and their idyllic home on Stardust Beach—something is breaking. And when his temper flares one too many times, NASA gives him a choice: face therapy, or forfeit his place in the program.

Haunted by his past, disconnected from the woman he once loved so fiercely, and quietly tormented by unresolved feelings for Jeanie Florence, Bill must finally confront the truths he’s buried for too long. But self-reflection doesn’t come easy to a man trained to compartmentalize, to press forward, to never look back.

As his marriage stretches thin and his mission approaches, Bill begins to spiral—emotionally and literally. Because high above Earth, aboard a Gemini spacecraft, something goes terribly wrong. And just like the man inside it, the capsule begins to spin out of control.

In a series first told from a male perspective, Stardust Beach: Book Five is a powerful story of identity, redemption, and the cost of silence in a world that demands perfection. As man and mission teeter on the edge of disaster, the question becomes: will Bill Booker survive the crash course of his own making?