The Fresco

The bizarre events that have been occurring across the United States - unexplained oddities tracked by Air Defense, mysterious disappearances, shocking deaths - seem to have no bearing on Benita Alvarez-Shipton's life. That is until the softly spoken thirty-six-year-old bookstore manager is approached by a pair of aliens asking her to transmit their message of peace to the Powers That Be in Washington.

Suddenly an ordinary woman with a poor self-image and lowly self-esteem has been thrust into the limelight. She must leave behind a house in New Mexico on the brink of foreclosure and a drunken bully of a husband to undertake a mission of utmost importance to her planet and its peoples.

Her obligation does not end once the message is delivered, however, for the Pistach have offered their human hosts a spectacular opportunity for knowledge and enrichment. And Benita is to act as sole liaison between the two sentient races. The more she learns about the extraterrestrials who have transformed her grey existence, the more her appreciation grows for their culture, their beliefs and their art - especially the ancient and mysterious Fresco that appears to dominate their collective lives.

But alongside the promise of peace is a dire, unspoken threat - the Pistach are not the only space-faring species making their presence known on Earth. There are others - cold, malevolent, hungry - who have now set their sights on Benita and their accomplices may be as close as Capitol Hill. And the desperate race to save herself and two worlds could carry Benita Alvarez far from her home planet . . . and light years away from anything she has ever seen.