Novella; released November 15, 2020 from Off Limits Press
art by Squidbar Designs
Ebook, paperback, audiobook from Amazon
Paperback: Bookshop.org + Barnes and Noble
Audiboook: Libro.fm
WINNER of the 2020 Lesfic Award for Best Horror
This Is Horror Award 2020 Finalist
The Worm and His Kings, Book 1
New York City, 1990: When you slip through the cracks, no one is there to catch you. Monique learns that the hard way after her girlfriend Donna vanishes without a trace.
Only after the disappearances of several other impoverished women does Monique hear the rumors. A taloned monster stalks the city’s underground and snatches victims into the dark.
Donna isn’t missing. She was taken.
To save the woman she loves, Monique must descender deeper than the known underground, into a subterranean world of enigmatic cultists and shadowy creatures. But what she finds looms beyond her wildest fears–a darkness that stretches from the dawn of time and across the stars.
“A cosmic transcendence” – Cemetery Dance
audiobook narrated by Allyson Voller
“Goes harder than Lovecraft himself ever dared” – SFF180
“Hailey Piper’s The Worm and His Kings is haunting and beautiful, heartbreaking and triumphant, a story of harming and healing, of knowing when to hold on and let go. It is a story of transcendence in a way Lovecraft’s work should have been. One of the best cosmic horror novels I’ve read in eons.” – Mary SanGiovanni, author of Thrall, The Hollower, and the Kathy Ryan series
“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 Catfish Lullaby
“There’s something so delightful about the feeling of impending cosmic doom that only Piper can effectively evoke in her brand of horror.” – The Line-Up
“The Worm and His Kings breaks all the rules, and this lawlessness is precisely what thrills us. Fresh, fantastic worldbuilding and a story as bold as its author. The announcement of a new voice in horror, bellowed from a cold, cosmic quarter.” – Josh Malerman, New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box
“cosmic horror masterwork” – Rue Morgue
Spanish edition art by Rául Ruiz
Also available in Spanish from Dilatando Mentes Editorial, El Gusano y Sus Reyes (released September 22, 2022)
Translated by Alexander Páez
Nueva York, 1990.
Cuando uno se sale del camino marcado, no suele haber nadie ahí para prestarle su ayuda; eso es algo que Monique ha aprendido por las malas después de que su novia Donna haya desaparecido sin déjar rastro.
Solo después de conocer la noticia de la ausencia de otras mujeres, Monique escucha los rumores que hablan de un monstruo con garras que acecha en las entrañas de la ciudad, llevándose a sus víctimas al subsuelo, a la oscuridad.
Pero Donna no ha desaparecido. La han secuestrado.
Para salvar a la mujer que ama, Monique debe descender más allá de los límites conocidos, ha de adentrarse en un mundo subterráneo de fanáticos de un culto enigmático y de criaturas sombrías…
Pero lo que encuentra va más allá de sus peores temores: una oscuridad que se extiende desde los albores del tiempo y a través de las estrellas.