Science teacher Ryland Grace wakes up on a spaceship light years from home with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. As his memory returns, he begins to uncover his mission: solve the riddle of the mysterious substance causing the sun to die out. He must call on his scientific knowledge and unorthodox ideas to save everything on Earth from extinction.

When deeply conservative English local Edith Swan and fellow residents begin to receive wicked letters full of unintentionally hilarious profanities, her rowdy, foul-mouthed, Irish migrant neighbor Rose Gooding is charged with the crime. The anonymous letters prompt a national uproar, and a trial ensues. However, as the town’s women—led by Police Officer Gladys Moss—begin to investigate the crime themselves, they suspect something is amiss and Rose may not be the culprit after all.

In September 2006, a 3 man patrol of Paras sets off from their outpost overlooking Kajaki Dam in southern Afghanistan, to engage the Taliban. As they make their way across a dried out river bed one of them steps on a mine left from the Russian occupation some 25 years before. His colleagues rush to his aid only to find they are surrounded by mines and every move threatens serious injury or death.