“You have never read another piece of weird fiction like this.”

– BookPage (starred review)

Just a small update to share that A Game in Yellow made BookPage’s “Best SFF & Horror 2025” alongside novels by R.F. Kuang, Joe Hill, and more!

A Game in Yellow previously got a starred review in BookPage, and I’m thrilled to see it on their annual list of Best of’s in speculative fiction!

A kink-fixated couple, Carmen and Blanca, have been in a rut. That is until Blanca discovers the enigmatic Smoke in an under-street drug den, who holds pages to a strange play, The King in Yellow. Read too much, and you’ll fall into madness. But read just a little and pull back, and it gives you the adrenaline rush of survivor’s euphoria, leading Carmen to fall into a game of lust at a nightmare’s edge.

“Masterful … a dreamlike but still utterly absorbing page-turner.”

– Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A mesmerizing, disorienting, and original tale of terror and ecstasy.”

– Library Journal (starred review)

“Truly frightening.”

– Fangoria

“Uncomfortably immersive … a damn fine read.”

– Bloody Disgusting

A Game in Yellow is out today from Saga/Simon and Schuster! It’s been a long time coming, from Carmen, Blanca, and Smoke springing to life in my head, to joining them with The King in Yellow, the madness seeping between early readers, and now it’s alive in the world. I couldn’t be more grateful, and I’m so excited for everyone to go on this wild journey.

Euphoria meets Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke in this latest novel by the Bram Stoker Award–winning author Hailey Piper, following a couple whose search to spice up their sex life leads them down a path of madness.

A kink-fixated couple, Carmen and Blanca, have been in a rut. That is until Blanca discovers the enigmatic Smoke in an under-street drug den, who holds pages to a strange play, The King in Yellow. Read too much, and you’ll fall into madness. But read just a little and pull back, and it gives you the adrenaline rush of survivor’s euphoria, leading Carmen to fall into a game of lust at a nightmare’s edge.

As the line blurs between the world Carmen knows and the one that she visits after reading from the play, she begins to desire more time in this other world no matter what horrors she brings back with her.

Bram Stoker Award-winning author Hailey Piper masterfully blends horror, erotica, and psychological thriller in this captivating and chilling story.

“With A Game In Yellow, Hailey Piper crafts an erotic descent into both madness and beauty. Haunting and strange cosmic chills that will grip you as tightly as a bondage frame.”

– Chuck Tingle, USA Today bestselling author of Lucky Day

“Audacious as hell, with the broken heart and searing talent to make it sing! With A Game in Yellow, Hailey Piper makes her horror stardom undeniable. She channels Clive Barker and Robert W. Chambers, but in this story of a lost and broken soul, the voice is all her own. Brava!”

– Christopher Golden, author of The House of Last Resort and The Night Birds

“Surreal, disquieting, and wholly absorbing, Hailey Piper’s A Game in Yellow possesses such suffocating power to bewilder, to enchant, and to completely overwhelm the reader. Written with the provocativeness of a Lynchian fever dream and the sophistication of a story by Lovecraft, this is Piper’s most arresting and satisfying work yet. A novel centered around mythology, obsession, sexuality, fetish, and the facade of the dramatic and the theatrical—I surrendered gladly and this book melted my brain.”

– Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“A dangerous game of cat and mouse between a submissive lesbian at a dead end job and the Cthhonic powers that lurk between the pages of a certain yellow play, A Game in Yellow is a tightly plotted homage that builds upon lost Carcosa and spins you around in a shimmering masquerade of the senses.”

– Linden A. Lewis, author of The First Sister

“You have never read another piece of weird fiction like this.”

– BookPage (starred review)