The Man in Her Pond

He fell out of the sky. She pulled him out of the water.

Josie Malone runs forty-two acres — and a lifetime of quiet — all by herself: fixing her own tractors, eating supper standing at the counter, and telling the whole town she is fine. Then something tears across her back field one night and crashes hard enough to rattle the dishes, and in the wreck she finds a man who is not a man at all: blue as deep water, breathing through gills, and dying of dry land.

Nerus is a scout from Pelagia, a world that is all ocean — and he can only survive a few hours out of water. Josie's spring-fed pond becomes his lifeline. Her barn becomes his dry dock. And the repairs that were supposed to take nine days become nights of shared work, pond water and moonlight, and a connection neither of their worlds has a word for.

But a missed check-in means a Pelagian retrieval ship is coming. A radar blip means a federal agent is asking questions in town. And Pelagian law has one rule above all others: no native leaves her world. Ever.

When the ship is ready, Josie has to decide what a life is worth — the only home she has ever known, or the man in her pond.

The Man in Her Pond is the first book in a warm, closed-door alien romance series about a farm girl, an ocean man, and the biggest small decision in the universe.