the Door to Hell: Book 3 in Mother River Series From files of Drake Institute

But something far older is stirring below. For more than fifty years, the Black Heart-the Darvaza gas crater-has burned in Turkmenistan's Karakum Desert, a wound created by human error and fed by methane rising from deep beneath the earth. Now the government intends to extinguish it. When unusual pressure shifts begin spreading beyond the crater, Dr. Brianna "Bri" Wilson and the newly formed Deepwatch team are called to investigate. Alongside Turkmen geophysicist Dr. Aydin Mamedov, they uncover a vast subsurface system already reacting to the forces gathering above it. But they are not the only ones interested in what lies beneath the fire. A powerful energy consortium, foreign political operatives, and a government under mounting pressure all converge on Darvaza-each with its own plan for the crater and the methane trapped below. As the desert begins to fracture, Bri must determine whether the changes beneath the Black Heart are a warning, a defense... or the beginning of something no one yet understands. The Door to Hell is not merely a fire to extinguish. It is a threshold-and Deepwatch may be the only thing standing between transformation and catastrophe.