A Light Most Hateful - by Hailey Piper (Paperback)

About the Book

A runaway working a dead-end job in Pennsylvania must fight to return home when an intense, otherworldly summer storm arrives bringing a mind-bending monster that enslaves the residents in the new novel by the author of Queen of Teeth.

Book Synopsis

Mona Awad's Bunny meets Stranger Things when a summer storm sweeps through a sleepy town, unleashing a monstrous power that threatens to bend reality, from the Bram Stoker award winning author of Queen of Teeth.

Three years after running away from home, Olivia is stuck with a dead-end job in nowhere town Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania. At least she has her best friend, Sunflower.

Olivia figures she'll die in Chapel Hill, if not from boredom, then the summer night storm which crashes into town with a mind-bending monster in tow.

If Olivia's going to escape Chapel Hill and someday reconcile with her parents, she'll need to dodge residents enslaved by the storm's otherworldly powers and find Sunflower.

But as the night strains friendships and reality itself, Olivia suspects the storm, and its monster, may have its eyes on Sunflower and everything she loves.

Including Olivia.

Review Quotes

LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST HORROR NOVELS 2023
PASTE MAGAZINE BEST HORROR BOOKS 2023
THE LINE-UP 2023 HORROR BOOK HIGHLIGHTS

Thrillingly original. Piper deftly stitches threads of vulnerability, existential anxiety, and complex friendship power dynamics into a feverish, nail-biting, writhing-in-your-seat nightmare. A juicy horror tale you'll want to sink your teeth into, before it sinks its teeth into you.
--Rachel Harrison, Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of The Return

Hailey Piper's prose crackles sharply and thrums with the mesmerizing pulse of a passing summer storm. A vivid, imaginative, and chillingly tense novel, A Light Most Hateful cements Piper as one of the most spectacularly fierce talents working in horror fiction today. -- Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

A Light Most Hateful is filled with mesmerizing language that breathes cosmic chaos, abandonment, loneliness, and desperation. Piper explores the fear of betrayal by those closest to us and of the meaning of friendship and loyalty in the face of disparity. This is a book where the landscapes are upturned and roaming, where memories come to life as nightmares, and beckons us with the question, what if you can control the act of creation and uncreation? Piper has fabricated a darkly glorious woven reality where everything might exist and unexist simultaneously. -- Ai Jiang, Nebula and Locus awatrd finalist, and author of Linghun

Every moment is earned, every monster deserving of its time in the spotlight. In short, it's a perfect primer for the beautifully dark world of Hailey Piper's fiction, as well as a must-read for longtime fans.--Paste Magazine

If Neil Gaiman, Mary Shelley, and Shirley Jackson could collaborate, this stunning novel would be the result.--Library Journal, Best Horror of the Year 2023

The story twists reader expectations into knots, flipping genre conventions and connecting unlikely elements to make something truly singular. The result is an ambitious, genre-shredding novel that takes big swings and, improbably, lands every one... Piper's prose crackles with energy and wit as it ties the novel's wilder excesses together into a story at once comfortingly familiar in its themes and cosmically alien in its execution. -- Publishers Weekly, starred review

A stunning novel that purposefully plays with genre conventions and centers love, even as it actively terrifies readers to their core, much like recent novels from Victor LaValle, Rachel Eve Moulton, and Chuck Tingle. -- Library Journal starred review

It is completely wild, a little ridiculous in a fun way [...] and plenty gross, too. Buckle up and enjoy the ride! -- Bookriot

Shades of Barker, Gaiman and King dance through A Light Most Hateful, but the horror is pure Hailey Piper. A devastating storm of unnatural origin? Check. A contagion of zombies infected with their own memories? Check. Nightmares begetting nightmares in a fractal convocation? Check. A friendship between two girls as opposite as they are alike, tested by fear and desire and destiny? Double and triple check! Piper envelops the reader in a tempest of terror from the first page to the last. It's as close to a thrill ride as you can get between two covers. Don't miss it! -- David Demchuk, award-winning author of The Bone Mother and RED X

Piper has spawned a slick mess of family dynamics. -- Polly Hall, Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of The Taxidermist's Lover

Piper's prose will leave you breathless in this stormy, jagged little pill of a novel about love and hate and acceptance in a world gone mad. A furiously compelling and propulsive read. -- Gemma Amor, Bram Stoker award-nominated author of Dear Laura

What has sprouted out from Hailey Piper's head is a fully-formed goddess of a novel, equal parts terrifying, awe-inspiring, and downright worshipful. I'm still scorched by A Light Most Hateful, even after closing its pages, blinded by its brilliance. -- Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Ghost Eaters

A LIGHT MOST HATEFUL begins with a scream, and that's appropriate given you'll be screaming your way through this swirling, phantasmagoric, unpredictable nightmare. Escaping the suburbs has never been so harrowing. -- Nat Cassidy, author of Mary: An Awakening of Terror and Nestlings

Hailey Piper has whipped up a roiling tale of horror unlike anything I've ever read. Like a bolt of lightning, this story will leave an imprint behind your eyelids, to be revisited and relived every time you close your eyes, long after you've turned the final page. -- Scott Leeds, author of Schrader's Chord

With A Light Most Hateful, we should all be hailing the new Queen of Cosmic Horror; Piper firmly cements her reputation of being one of the most electrifying and commanding voices in horror. -- Ginger Nuts of Horror

For previous works:

Eerie and visceral, Piper combines the supernatural with the deeply human in a novella that explores the many faces of horror, at once haunting and familiar, yet utterly new.
--A.C. Wise, Nebula Award-nominated author of Wendy, Darling

Hailey Piper boards a starship where the most terrifying part of the voyage isn't the cargo hold full of corpses, the tentacled creatures that stalk the pod bays, or their mysterious, otherworldly master, but the depths of the human psyche. An intriguing blend of b-movie scifi and incisive, soul-baring reflection.
--Adam Cesare, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Clown in a Cornfield

With surgical precision, Hailey Piper's stories slice through the skin, fat, and muscle of her characters' lives, all the way down to the living bone and what is written on it. In terms of their prose. their wit, their insight, their compassion, their terror, these are the sharpest of stories. Read them, but be prepared for the cuts.
--John Langan, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Fisherman

Every story has this incredible balance of being dark and scary but also wildly charming! It's magic...
--Rachel Harrison, Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of The Return

A powerful, beautiful horror story.
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Readers ... will be in horror heaven with this mesmerizing, original, and breathtaking debut.
--Library Journal (starred review)

Hailey Piper is at the top of her game, literally machete-chopping through new territory
--Cemetery Dance

One of the best horror books of 2021.
--Rue Morgue

A voice to be reckoned with.
--Tor Nightfire

A veritable banquet
--Cemetery Gates Media

Bold, thoughtful, and beautifully written.
--The Future Fire

About the Author

Hailey Piper is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth, A Light Most Hateful, The Worm and His Kings, No Gods for Drowning, and other books of horror. She is an active member of the Horror Writers Association, with over 100 short stories appearing in various publications. She lives with her wife in Maryland, where their occult rituals are secret. Find her at www.haileypiper.com.