For my favorite ex-Boston guy, Mike Ryan, and his partner, Ray Cox. Good friends and Grrrrreat Bears! A.M.

For Eric, J. E, and every other child who anxiously awaits the return of a parent from war and for all of those for whom the wait, sadly, will never end. M. A. M.

Without the work of Melinda Metz, the Roswell High series never would have begun, and we would not have gotten to know Max, Isabel, Michael, Liz, Maria, Kyle, Alex, Valenti, or any of the others.

Without the further work by Jason Katims to develop Roswell into a TV series, none of its characters would have come into our lives in a «living» form. Jason's vision was perfectly realized by the actors, writers, directors, and production personnel.

Without the work of editor and new mom Jennifer Klonsky and her assistant, Samantha Schutz, we never would have read the wonderful Roswell books that preceded ours, nor would we have had a chance to wrap up the saga in the best manner we could. Without the help of Marco Palmieri and Dean Wesley Smith, we might not have found our way into Jennifer Klonsky's able hands.

And without the fans who kept the Roswell TV series and the book series alive in their hearts, their homes, and their Internet sites, we might not be writing these words today.

So, we want to thank all of those people for letting us play in the desert sandbox of Roswell. We're glad we got a chance to be… «here with you.» Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin, May 2003

What Has Gone Before… 1999: «September 23. Journal entry one. I'm Liz Parker, and five days ago I died. After that, things got really weird…» Liz Parker was a relatively normal teenage girl, working at her parents' alien-themed diner, the Crashdown Cafe.

Then came that fateful fall day when a gunman accidentally shot Liz during an argument with another customer.

A boy Liz knew from high school, Max Evans, knelt beside her and put his hand over her bullet wound, healing her completely. But when Max ran away and Liz saw a glowing silver handprint on her stomach, she knew she had to find out the truth.

Max soon told her the truth, an unbelievable story that would pull Liz and her friends into danger, drama, romance, and interstellar conflict. Max and his friends were aliens.

July 1947: In the desert outside Roswell, New Mexico, an alien spaceship crashed to the ground. The government soon swooped in to quarantine the site, issuing a press release stating that the wreckage of a flying disk had been recovered. Hours later, the press release was rescinded, and the government claimed the object was actually a weather balloon.

But the government had in its possession or a short time material from the crash, including eight gestation pods containing gestating alien life-forms. Those pods were later liberated from the government by the two aliens who survived the crash. Four of the pods were placed in a desert cave along with alien technology known as the Granilith and were watched over by the alien who came to call himself Nasedo, a Mesaliko Indian word meaning visitor.

The other four pods were taken to New York by the other alien, who took human form as Kal Langley. But after Langley got involved in the film industry, he attempted to become more human, and left his pod charges to gestate on their own.

Nasedo watched over the pods in Roswell, but spent much of his time hunting down and killing those who investigated the Roswell crash. In 1989, three of the pods broke open, and a trio of seemingly human six-year-old children emerged. Wandering toward the highway, two of them were found and adopted by Phillip and Diane Evans, who named them Max and Isabel. The third child was adopted into an abusive foster family and was given the name Michael Guerin.

As the children matured, they learned that they shared uncanny powers, and the strange memories of their emergence from the pods led them to question their origins. It wasn't until their teen years that they began to discover the larger truth about themselves. And their revelation to Liz Parker of their identities started them on their path…

1999: Max, Isabel, and Michael discovered that they were members of the «Royal Four» from the war-torn star system of Antar. There, Max had been King Zan; Isabel had been his sister, Vilandra; Michael had been his second-incommand, Rath; and Ava had been his wife.

Ava was the occupant of the fourth pod, but she had been raised separately from the others by Nasedo. As a teen, she was reintroduced into their lives as Tess Harding.

Max, Isabel, Michael, and Tess were not fully human, or fully alien. Their genetic makeup mixed elements of both, giving them special powers. Max could heal others, Isabel could «dreamwalk» into human minds, Michael could wield destructive or defensive energy, and Ava could «mindwarp» others into seeing or doing what she wanted.

They all could manipulate molecular structure to some extent.

Following Max's healing of Liz, others soon found out about the existence of the alien-human hybrids among them. Liz's friend Maria DeLuca fell for the bad-boy antics of Michael, even though their relationship was rocky.

Mutual friend Alex Whitman was attracted to Isabel, though she didn't return his affection. Sheriff Jim Valenti started out as a nemesis to the kids, but soon came to understand that they needed protection more than exposure, especially after Max healed Jim's son, Kyle, preventing his death from a gunshot wound.

The Roswell teens would come to learn that they had many enemies. A classified government group known as the Special Unit went to great lengths to capture them, especially after Nasedo killed several of its top agents. And other aliens from the Antarian system had come to Earth to kill the Royal Four; chief among them were the «Skins," who could renew their essences using human bodies, which they called «husks.» Meanwhile, the second set of pods had been opened in New York, and the four alien teens there grew up bitter, angry, and tough. After Rath and Vilandra (calling herself «Lonnie») killed Zan, they brought Ava with them to Roswell in an attempt to broker an interstellar peace using Max as a pawn. Their gambit didn't work, however.

Following the death of Nasedo, Tess moved up her plan to work out a deal with Antarian forces on her own. She manipulated Max into sleeping with her, then became pregnant with his alien child. She also mindwarped Alex into helping her, eventually killing him in the process. When she was exposed as a murderess, Tess used the Granilith to return to Antar to deliver Max's heir to his enemies. The reasons behind her treachery remained a mystery.

Desperate to recover his child, Max became unpredictable. He tracked down Kal Langley and forced him to help Max try to return to Antar, but they were unsuccessful. Isabel, rebelling against Max's orders that none of the aliens get further involved with humans, married the man she had been secretly dating, Jesse Ramirez. Michael grew restless under Max's unfocused leadership and attempted to take control of the group himself. And Tess eventually returned with Max's child, which had been rejected on Antar since it was fully human.

In spring 2002, everything came to a boiling point. The Special Unit was closing in, gathering evidence against the teens. In an attempt to redeem herself, Tess blew up the nearby military base, but this caused further complications for the group. Max sent his child away so he could live safely with a human family, and the group found itself on the run from Roswell, traveling in a VW Microbus.