The Last Vintner of Kepler-442b

About this book:

On the rust-colored plains of Kepler-442b, Lyra tends the only vineyard for light-years—a fragile pocket of Earth heritage in a colony built on synthetic protein and recycled air. Her vines shouldn't thrive in the toxic, iron-heavy soil, but they do: growing faster, digging deeper, and producing a vintage reserved exclusively for the administrators who run Horizon Prime. When Lyra discovers the wine carries more than flavor—its sap laced with compounds that calm, sedate, and obey—she uncovers a generations-old secret: the cuttings weren't chosen for survival. They were engineered for control.

As the colony's elite demand an early harvest to quell rising unrest, Lyra faces an impossible choice: deliver the vintage that keeps the peace, or follow the roots breaking through the perimeter into the wild red dust, where something ancient is waking up. Her grandfather's coded journals warn of a bridle, not a gift. The soil is changing the vines. The vines are changing the wine. And the wine is changing the people who drink it.

*The Last Vintner of Kepler-442b* is a taut, atmospheric sci-fi thriller where viticulture becomes rebellion, and every glass poured is a dose of obedience. For readers who love the claustrophobic tension of *The Expanse* and the biological dread of *Annihilation*—this is a story about what grows when you plant Earth's oldest vices in alien soil, and what happens when the vintner finally tastes her own vintage.