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Book Summary and Reviews of A Game in Yellow by Hailey Piper

A Game in Yellow by Hailey Piper

A Game in Yellow

by Hailey Piper

  • Critics' Consensus (5):
  • Published:
  • Aug 2025, 288 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

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.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Readers will become enamored with Carmen and Blanca and hope for their relationship to survive this supernatural roller coaster. There's lots here to sink one's teeth into." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Piper deftly combines sapphic erotica with Robert W. Chambers's 1895 cosmic horror classic The King in Yellow to create a mesmerizing, disorienting, and original tale of terror and ecstasy." —Library Journal

"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 Carcossa and spins you around in a shimmering masquerade of the senses." —Linden A. Lewis, author of The First Sister

"Audacious as hell, with the broken heart and searing talent to make it sing." —Christopher Golden, author of The House of Last Resort

This information about A Game in Yellow was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Hailey Piper

Hailey Piper is the Bram Stoker Award–winning author of Queen of Teeth, A Light Most Hateful, The Worm and His Kings series, and other books of dark fiction. She is also the author of over 100 short stories appearing in Weird Tales, Pseudopod, Cosmic Horror Monthly, Cast of Wonders, and various other publications. Her nonfiction appears in Writer's Digest, Library Journal, CrimeReads, and elsewhere. She lives with her wife in Maryland, where their occult rituals are secret. Find Hailey at HaileyPiper.com.

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