Please join us to celebrate the release of Jakub Szamalek's book "Inner Space" (HarperCollins).

Doors open 6:30pm

Start time 7:00pm

Jakub Szamalek lives in Wolfville but is best known for his international video game writing credentials. He is Narrative Director at Rebel Wolves game studio. Born in Poland, he studied in the UK, at Oxford and then Cambridge, where he was a Cambridge Gates Scholar. He is an author and the writer behind the international video game bestsellers, including The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and The Blood of Dawnwalker.

"A wonderfully crafted space thriller. It has everything we loved about The Martian or Gravity, but more psychological depth. It’s also a chilling picture of the Russian mentality and its workings, written by someone who truly understands it. With the resurgent conflict between the East and the West and the return of the threat of totalitarianism, this blockbuster book couldn’t be more timely.”—Zygmunt Miloszewski, bestselling author of Rage and Priceless

American and Russian astronauts are trapped together in the International Space Station as war breaks out in Ukraine and life support functions begin to fail in this action-packed debut technothriller that ripples with the tension and danger of Solaris and Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary.

When an ammonia leak threatens the astronauts on the International Space Station, NASA directs Lucy Poplasky, one of the ISS’s first female commanders, to investigate the cause. Russia has just invaded Ukraine and tensions are running high—could the leak be a brazen act of sabotage?

The Russian cosmonauts aboard deny tampering with the ship’s systems and insist on the issue stems from the American side. As levels of the poisonous gas rise, Lucy’s investigation shatters trust between the Russian and Western crews, exposing deep fissures in the partnership thousands of miles below.

Intense and unrelenting, Inner Space questions what truly draws us to the stars: the urge to explore the unknown, selfish ambition, or an instinct to run away from the entrenched troubles on Earth?