Burn Line

Jonathan Sims

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Book cover for Burn Line
Image for variant 9781464258534
Book cover for Burn Line
Image for variant 9781464258534

Burn Line

Burn Line

Jonathan Sims

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Description

From the dark and twisted mind behind the podcast sensation The Magnus Archives comes a suffocating, socially charged nightmare that reveals how fear festers in the cracks of everyday life...

Beneath the streets of London, it hungers...

It's the hottest summer on record and the city is suffering. Prices are high, pay is low. And on one fateful morning five travelers find themselves trapped in a tube car deep in the London Underground.

It will change their lives forever.

By the time they leave the train they will be bound together as witnesses to a single horrific event. Something terrible, irreversible, and monstrous. Something hungry.

But they can't remember what it is.

On their own, they each begin to experience strange dissociative events. Time gets lost. Friends disappear. Something stalks them in the shadows. They make an unlikely team, but to remember what they encountered that day on the train, they will have to work together. Because now it's up to them to understand what horror they saw - and stop it in its tracks before it drags everyone else down below.

Critical Reviews

"I love it. Nobody does the creeping dread of liminal spaces quite like Jonathan Simms; the sweltering hell that is the London Underground in The Burn Line channels the glorious uncanny shiver of some of the best episodes of The Magnus Archives. The endless urban maze and the villainy of the super-rich are some of Simms' hallmark motifs and it's scintillating to see them shown in novel-length glory here. The multiple-perspective structure means that we get a many-faceted view of the horror, so the shape of the book is a kind of dark, unnerving gem." -- Natasha Pulley, author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

"Jonathan Sims' The Burn Line combines the best of British class satire with real grindhouse fun. You will laugh, you will cry, you will gnash your teeth with righteous indignation, but most of all you will root for this ragtag gang of underdogs on their literal descent into a modern hell of the London Underground to face off with the demons you wouldn't expect. Kind Hearts and Coronets meets The Midnight Meat Train!" -- Bitter Karella, author of Moonflow

"Rich, character-driven and very scary, The Burn Line is a master-class in sweaty urban horror. Read it on your next shadowy subway ride through the underground and try not to feel like something is watching you from the tunnels." -- Trevor Henderson, author of Scarewaves

"Jonathan Sims breathes life into a found family worth rooting for and a mysterious menace worth losing sleep over. The Burn Line is an immersive fever dream that drags you into the depths of a subterranean hell and leaves you gasping for fresh air." -- Brian McAuley, USA Today Bestselling Author of Breathe In, Bleed Out

"An entertaining and immersive eldritch horror-mystery...[that is] bonkers in all the right ways, providing claustrophobic chills and providing a biting social commentary." -- Library Journal

Publishing Information

Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Pub date: 2026-08-25
Length: 384 pages

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