After two scientists crash on a hostile moon, they must use every tool at their disposal to survive. A tense, atmospheric voyage into the unknown from Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of Children of Time.

‘Thrilling, terrifying and fascinating’

Tim Peake, British ESA astronaut

They looked into darkness. The darkness looked back . . .

An utterly gripping story of survival and first contact on a hostile planet from Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Children of Time.

A commercial expedition to a distant star system discovers a pitch-black moon alive with radio activity. Its high-gravity, high-pressure, zero-oxygen environment is deadly to human life, but ripe for exploitation. They named it Shroud.

Under no circumstances can a human survive Shroud’s inhospitable surface – but a catastrophic accident forces Juna Ceelander and Mai Ste Etienne to make an emergency landing in a barely adequate escape vehicle. Alone, and fighting for survival, the two women embark on a gruelling journey across land, sea and air in search of salvation.

But as they travel, Juna and Mai begin to understand Shroud’s unnerving alien species. It also begins to understand them. If they escape Shroud, they’ll somehow have to explain the impossible and translate the incredible. That is, if they make it back at all . . .

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Praise for Shroud

‘Clever, vivid and terrifying . . . No one has an imagination like Adrian Tchaikovsky’ – Jim Al-Khalili, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s The Life Scientific

‘Crunchy, conceptual SF at its best’ – Richard Morgan, author of Altered Carbon

‘This is hard-edged science fiction that never loses its soul’ – Sue Burke, author of Semiosis

‘Makes Andy Weir's vision of Mars in The Martian look like a Caribbean beach resort’ – The Fantasy Hive

"Tchaikovsky is writing at the very peak of his powers and he is fizzing with more interesting ideas than any one human has a right to" - New Scientist

"Simply put, Shroud is the best first-contact novel I have read in years" - Locus Magazine

"Makes Andy Weir's vision of Mars in The Martian look like a Caribbean beach resort" - Fantasy Hive