Message in the Sky

Title: Message in the Sky
Author: John Minichillo

Available Now at
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
and by request from your local bookseller

A UFO appears in broad daylight above suburban Napanee, Indiana. Two neighboring couples will never be the same.

Tommy, the cookout king, is so afraid of the watchers that he betrays himself to turn vegetarian. His high-strung wife, Cher, evolves into a genius of meditation despite herself.

Next door, Jim denies everything he’s seen, even after his repeated abductions. Meanwhile, his partner, Amy, who’s sure we’re not alone but needs answers, drags both couples to a UFO conference in Arkansas.

Met with the cryptic Message in the Sky, Tommy, Cher, Jim, and Amy all struggle to make sense of their lives after normality shot away at an unlikely angle and an impossible speed. 

ISBN: 978-1-951393-26-7
Price: $12.95 (paperback) $4.99 (Kindle ebook)
Release date: 1/16/24

Praise for Message in the Sky:

“John Minichillo’s Message In The Sky is crazy in the best possible way. UFO sightings. Aliens. The Trumps and Clintons – not the politicians, but feuding next door neighbors – become friends and collaborators. I never knew what was going to happen. The novel is a constant, exuberant surprise.” 
— Marcy Dermansky, author or Hurricane Girl and Very Nice

“A slyly clever, very funny book… a portrait of America in all its magnificent absurdity.”
— Ben Loory, author of Tales of Falling and Flying

“You may think you know what John Minichillo is up to when Message in the Sky opens, but you don’t. Satire, allegory, domestic comedy, universal cautionary tale: there are nods to all of the above, but Minichillo isn’t happy to limit himself to just one style. He’s too curious and ambitious a writer for that. No matter how fantastic Message in the Sky becomes, the world is recognizably ours: technology slams up against the bucolic which collides with the military machine, every page rich with references to American culture and politics. A little Spielberg and a little Peele, Minichillo supersedes genre, with sly wit and compassion, with assured and nimble writing. Message in the Sky is both chilling and sweet, and situated in that peculiarly American space of innovation and referentiality.”
— Victoria Lancelotta, author of Ways to Disappear, winner of the 2022 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize