Novel; released October 10, 2023 from Titan Books
art by Julia Lloyd
Available from Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Amazon, Penguin Random House, LibroFM
“An ambitious, genre-shredding novel that takes big swings and, improbably, lands every one.”
– 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.”
– Library Journal (starred review)
“One of the most powerful rising voices in genre fiction”
Mona Awad’s Bunny meets Stranger Things in this mind-bending and terrifying examination of female friendship and the lengths we’ll go to protect the ones we love, 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.
Featured in Library Journal’s “Best Horror of 2023” and Paste Magazine’s “The Best Horror Books of 2023”
“If Neil Gaiman, Mary Shelley, and Shirley Jackson could birth a book baby, this stunning novel would be the outcome.” – The Line-Up
audiobook narrated by Jeremy Carlisle Parker
“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, USA Today Bestselling 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
“Much like with Zeus before her, 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
“Piper has spawned a slick mess of family dynamics.”
– Polly Hall, Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of The Taxidermist’s Lover
“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
“Shades of Barker, Gaiman and King dance through A Light Most Hateful, but the horror is pure Hailey Piper.”
– David Demchuk, author of The Bone Mother and Red X
“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 Nestlings
“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
“A Light Most Hateful is filled with mesmerizing language that breathes cosmic chaos, abandonment, loneliness, and desperation.”
– A i Jiang, author of Linghun