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Atomic Coffin

A thrilling, heart-in-mouth but can’t-stop-turning-the-pages new novel of deep-sea terror . . .

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Atomic Coffin

Written by: Benedict Anning
Narrated by: Kristin Atherton
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December 1984. SIS field asset Heidi Sperling [codename Thistle] exfiltrates from East Berlin with the sole copy of a critical intelligence leak: a naval log containing a solitary message received from a previously unidentified Soviet submarine.

Incredulously – impossibly – it seems the vessel, known only as TK-15, has been sitting motionless and undetected in the waters between Scotland and Iceland for three whole years. And now this latest message reads: ACTIVE.

Picked up by the Royal Navy’s submarine HMS Viking, Heidi is thrust into a 'black ops' mission: find TK15 and neutralise it at any cost. But as her only ally on board the Viking falls sick, she realises this modified vessel is far more than a Soviet experiment to gain an upper hand in the nuclear arms race. Here, in the crushing depths of the North Atlantic, it seems something darker has awoken - something that cannot be contained by any superpower.

As Heidi’s own reality twists around her, an unknowable force cripples the Viking's defences and drives its crew to madness. Trapped in the deep, Heidi has no choice but to find a way to save the remaining crew and stop TK-15 for good, before it steals what’s left of her mind . . .

© Benedict Anning 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

 20th Century Espionage Historical Spies & Politics Thriller & Suspense
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Critic Reviews

Combines a cold war spy novel with lurking horrors beneath the sea . . . a creepy, disorientating journey into fear. (Lisa Tuttle)
Anning’s ability to create an unusual protagonist and a well-realised mise-en-scène lifts this out of the common run and implies there is much more to come from him.
If Philip K Dick and Stephen King had a lovechild at the height of Cold War tensions, it would look something like this. (NICHOLAS BINGE, author of Ascension)
Brilliantly original must-read horror. Anning has fused a claustrophobic submarine-set Cold War thriller with a genuinely terrifying Event Horizon-style nightmare, and the result is tonally terrific, a nightmarish descent which will have you clinging to your armchair every single fathom.
This is a first-rate work...it has pace and ideas, genre thrills combined with philosophical questions.
Claustrophobia-inducing . . . Atomic Coffin feels like an underwater version of Event Horizon, with a little bit of Solaris mixed in . . . a sunken treasure chest of delights.
Things don’t get much darker than the depths of the north Atlantic, where most of the action in Benedict Anning’s impressive debut effort, Atomic Coffin takes place.... The icy claustrophobia of the deep-sea setting and the sense of a paranoid world on the brink of nuclear Armageddon are strongly conveyed.
Awash with crushing terror and claustrophobia, and the dread of physical and psychological isolation, Atomic Coffin is an excellent high-pressure tale of cosmic horror. (TIM LEBBON, author of Secret Lives of The Dead)
This is a cracker! Creepy, claustrophobic and laced with dread, Atomic Coffin is a first-rate horror novel! (GARETH BROWN, author of The Book of Doors)
As if John Hornor Jacobs wrote The Hunt for Red October immediately after watching ‘Event Horizon’, Atomic Coffin is a complex cosmic puzzle of a debut, delivering Cold War spy-thriller pacing aboard a tense, claustrophobic submarine . . . and there’s something so much worse onboard. Fans of SA Barnes' space horror will love this gripping deep-sea adventure. (ALLY WILKES, author of All the White Spaces)
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