DIMENSIONS

Nathalie Cabrol

Éditions Julliard, 512 pages, 2026

Full English manuscript available

Why you should take a look at it:
√ A thriller grounded in science
√ Breakout debut with built-in audience
√ Essential reading for fans of Dan Brown and Michael Crichton

France, 1519. In the final days of his life at the Clos Lucé, Leonardo da Vinci is consumed not by painting or invention, but by a final, troubling vision. Before his death, he conceals a set of notebooks—pages filled with cryptic diagrams, celestial calculations, and urgent warnings about forces beyond human understanding. Then the notebooks vanish.

Five centuries later.

Three unidentified objects fall from the sky, crashing into the high plateaus of the Andes. They are neither meteorites nor human-made machines, covered in intricate symbols—symbols that match sketches found in Leonardo’s long-lost writings. Within days, scientists, intelligence agencies, private military contractors, and secretive research groups converge on the sites. Several of those who approach the objects die under unexplained circumstances.

When fragments of Leonardo’s hidden notebooks resurface, a small group of researchers begins to suspect that the Renaissance master did not merely imagine distant worlds—he may have understood something about them. From a remote monastery in Nepal to classified laboratories in the United States, from forgotten underground vaults at the Clos Lucé to the deserts of South America, the search for the truth becomes a relentless global pursuit.

But powerful forces are already at work. Rival factions—human and perhaps not entirely human—are determined to control the discovery. As encrypted clues are decoded and ancient symbols aligned with modern astrophysics, a terrifying possibility emerges; Leonardo’s final warning was not about his own time, but about ours. What he foresaw is now unfolding.

In this race against time, nothing is as it seems, and the fate of Earth may depend on a secret buried for five hundred years.

Blending historical intrigue, cutting-edge science, and high-stakes suspense, Dimensions is a sweeping international thriller that moves across centuries, continents, and realities. At its heart lies a revelation that challenges everything we believe about the universe—and humanity’s place within it.

Nathalie A. Cabrol is a French American explorer and astrobiologist and the director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute. Her book The Secret Life of the Universe was published by Scribner in 2024. Dimensions is her first work of fiction.