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Ahead of Herself
Paperback
Series: Standalone Sci-Fi Novels by Raphael Urbain
Mystery & ThrillerScience Fiction
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Apr 19 2026
Pages: 320
Weight: 0.95
Height: 0.67 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Mira Voss is the Temporal Directorate's best field agent. She has never failed a mission. She has never asked the wrong question. She is about to do both.
When a mysterious saboteur begins dismantling key moments across history - surgically, precisely, and always one step ahead - Mira is deployed to stop them. The case should be routine. It isn't.
The saboteur anticipates every trap. Knows every move. Leaves behind clues that feel uncomfortably, impossibly personal. And no matter how close Mira gets, she always arrives one step behind - in Ancient Rome, at a 1970s rock festival, in a city three minutes from catastrophe - in ways that are increasingly, absurdly, suspiciously convenient.
Then she corners the saboteur in a collapsing timeline.
And comes face to face with herself.
The saboteur is a future version of Mira - thirteen years older, carrying a truth the Directorate has buried for eighty years, and absolutely right about the injustice she is trying to undo. She is not a villain. She is exhausted. She has been alone for a very long time. And she has been managing the chase - every near-miss, every escaped trap, every perfectly timed obstacle - to keep the window open just long enough for her past self to find the one thing she never could.
Another way.
Ahead of Herself is a time-travel adventure about a woman who spends five eras chasing a criminal, only to discover the criminal has been protecting her all along. It is a book about the difference between the system and the justice the system claims to serve. About what it costs to be right when you are completely alone. And about the specific, irreplaceable value of having someone who will follow the thread with you.
Propulsive and funny in Acts One and Two - with set pieces across Ancient Rome, 1970s rock festivals, and a city three minutes from catastrophe - Ahead of Herself holds its emotional gut-punch entirely for Act Three, when the full shape of the loop becomes visible and the only question left is whether Mira can find the path her future self never could.
For readers of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Red Rising, and The Time Traveler's Wife - a beach read with a twist you'll trace back to page one.
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