The Girl Who Flew Too High

As children we're told to reach for the stars. But what happens when you heroically climb the highest peak, lift your hands up to the sky...then tumble over a thousand-foot cliff?

This is the fifth book in the science fiction series "The Girl with the Turtle Tattoo." Sally Smith has journeyed out to the stars on a Dinosapien spaceship. She made it all the way to the Black Hole in the center of our Milky Way. But in a fit of eons-old, festering insanity, an evil alien threw them beyond the Event Horizon into a new Universe created in his own perverted image. Now crashed on a rocky, lifeless, volcanic planet, Sally and her faithful reptilian crew have come to the very end of the line. They are bombarded by intense radiation, starving, weak, and sick.

As the rotten Universe implodes around her, Sally succumbs to fulminant cancer. Her last thoughts are of her long-lost love, David King. At least he's safe back in the healthy Universe, on Earth. But, unbeknownst to her, he's time-traveled to the 17th century. Yet again, he's trying to change the timeline that dooms Earth and separates him forever from Sally.

Desperately evading Roman soldiers and alert religious fanatics, Dave must convince a cowardly Galileo Galilei to be brave. For the sake of his new, heretical vision of the Stars, the renowned scholar must refuse house arrest. Instead, he must allow the authorities to publically burn him to death at the stake!

Meanwhile back in the dying universe, the Dinosapiens can't bear to lose their beloved human friend. The crew knows that locked in time-frozen tubes are yet other versions of her, waiting to be thawed out. But the replicates are not as kind or unselfish as the original. When all hope is lost, will the younger Sally-clones choose to reach even higher-for the impossible? Or will they discover that flying too close to the sun just gets you burned?