As we move into the warmest months of the year, things tend to get a bit more relaxed. It's the most popular time of the year for vacations, and many people like to go camping or visit a summer cabin or resort. Often these areas have one thing in common: a lot less people than where you normally live! This can be wonderfully renewing and invigorating—and one thing that most people notice as soon as the sun sets on the first night at their favorite rural vacation spot is the vast beauty of the night sky. Away from city lights and clogged freeways, the stars shine as brilliantly as they did centuries ago.

I hope you have a chance to get away this summer to your favorite hideaway. Hopefully your vacation will be uneventful, but you might want to keep your eyes on the sky. With hundreds of UFO sightings each year, you never know what you might see.

Many of us are curious about unidentified flying objects, an interest that seems to have peaked a few years ago with the popular television series The X-Files. But there are a dedicated few who have devoted decades to the idea that somewhere the truth is out there—and despite being regarded by many as oddball eccentrics, they're not giving up the quest to prove that aliens have been doing fly-bys of planet Earth for more than fifty years.

Curt Sutherly is one of those dedicated few. A UFO researcher since the early 1970s, he has amassed more than three decades of experience, dozens of high-profile contacts, and hundreds of first-person accounts of UFO sightings. You can benefit from his dedication without ever having to leave that comfy chaise next to the pool when you read UFO Mysteries.

Sutherly served in the United States Air Force during the Vietnam War and has been a professional journalist and travel writer. As his interest in UFO phenomena grew, so did the amount of time he spent traveling around the country to investigate sightings. In fact, the more involved he became in his research, the more he began to experience strange phenomena firsthand. Sutherly's level-headed personality and straightforward style really shine in UFO Mysteries. He's neither a true believer nor a cynical skeptic; he's just someone who wants to shed light on UFO phenomena and what it may mean for the future of our species and our planet.

Beginning with pilot Kenneth Arnold's 1947 report of an unidentified flying object, UFO Mysteries traces the history of UFO sightings in the United States throughout the Cold War and into the late 1990s. Conspiracy theory buffs will appreciate his analysis of the phenomena of the Men in Black, Area 51, and claims that the US government has been engaged in a disinformation campaign about alien visitation for over half a century.

In this revised and expanded version of his earlier book Strange Encounters, Sutherly also includes an appendix containing detailed descriptions of triangular UFO sightings throughout the 1990s, as well as his own theories as to what's really going on in our skies. Even though Sutherly knows his subject inside and out and presents many facts, statistics, and scientific findings throughout the book, his friendly and frank first-person style makes UFO Mysteries a perfect prelude to a little summertime stargazing.

A field investigator for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), Preston Dennett is another person who has dedicated a large part of his life to uncovering the truth about UFOs and alien encounters. In 1986, Dennett was living in Topanga Canyon, a small community in the Santa Monica Mountains of southern California. Intrigued by UFO phenomena, he began researching reports of sightings all over the United States. To his surprise, he uncovered evidence of numerous sightings literally in the skies above his own backyard. Topanga Canyon proved to be a UFO "hot spot," or area where many local residents had reported similar encounters over the past ten years.

But the fateful evening of June 14, 1992 was the beginning of a wave of UFO sightings in the skies over Topanga Canyon. And the ships weren't just passing overhead. Missing time, sightings of bizarre animals, memories of encounters with alien beings and other inexplicable occurrences including possible covert government surveillance were being reported by people who were, by all accounts, normal, healthy, sane people with no particular previous interest in UFOs.

Something very strange was going on, and the deeper Dennett dug, the stranger it became as he gradually began to compile compelling evidence of a cover-up involving the local police and the federal government. If the UFO reports were thought to be untrue, why would law enforcement and government agencies be so actively involved in suppressing reports of UFO activity? UFOs Over Topanga Canyon is the true story of what the United States government doesn't want you to know.

So this summer, as you head off to your favorite vacation destination, keep your eyes on the skies. You never know what (or who) might be up there.