A woman must confront the demons of her past when she attempts to fix up her childhood home in this devilishly clever take on the haunted house novel from the USA Today bestselling author of Black Sheep and So Thirsty.
Play Nice
by Rachel Harrison
September 9, 2025
Genre: Horror
PLAY NICE centers on Clio, a successful stylist and influencer who’s just inherited her late mother’s home—the childhood home her mother Alexandra insisted was possessed and even turned the tale into a bestselling memoir. But Clio’s father and older sisters always dismissed it as the delusions of a destructive alcoholic, and Clio believed them.
While her sisters view the inheritance as a painful relic of their past trauma, Clio sees it as an opportunity to create captivating house-flipping content and reconnect with the last remaining memories of her mother.
As she moves in to prepare the house for sale, unsettling things begin to happen. And for the first time, Clio starts to question everything she thought she knew about her mother—and whether the real story has been buried all along.
Early praise for PLAY NICE
"Rachel Harrison once again gives us our best friends, our best enemies, our best crushes, and our worst nightmares. This time sexier, scarier, grittier than ever before."—CJ Leede, USA Today bestselling author of American Rapture
"Rachel Harrison is in a league of her own—maybe a genre of her own. Play Nice is the sexiest, scariest, most fun haunted house novel I’ve ever read, a Barbie Dreamhouse oozing blood, one of those perfect blends of horror, heart, and winking wit only she can pull off. This book is so gripping it performed its own possession; I physically couldn’t put it down. Harrison is my horror queen, and this book is her best yet."—Ashley Winstead, USA Today-bestselling author of Midnight is the Darkest Hour
"Play Nice packs a prickly punch by cleverly nesting its possession story within another kind of familial and familiar possession."—Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of The Cabin at the End of the World
"Play Nice is as fun as a journey into darkness and family trauma can get. Rachel Harrison crafts a uniquely spirited haunting that’s both ruthlessly frightening and overflowing with heart."
—Chuck Tingle, USA Today bestselling author of Lucky Day and Bury Your Gays
"I raced through Rachel Harrison's Play Nice, drawn in by the relatable protagonist and the irresistible blend of horror, mystery and family drama."—Tananarive Due, Bram Stoker Award winner, The Reformatory
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About the Author:
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Rachel Harrison is the national bestselling author of BLACK SHEEP, SUCH SHARP TEETH, CACKLE and THE RETURN, which was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. Her short fiction has appeared in Guernica, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, as an Audible Original, and in her debut story collection BAD DOLLS. She lives in western New York with her husband and their cat/overlord.
