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Such Nice People

With Christmas approaching, high-school senior Tom Nash hears voices and plans to murder his family. His relatives sense something wrong but don't know how to respond.

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Tom Nash. President of the Senior class. Captain of the basketball team. Life was opening its arms for him, but Tom could think only of death. As Christmas drew closer and his relatives made their holiday plans, Tom, tormented by voices in his head, made his own plans-to murder his whole family.

As Tom raced toward his destiny, each member of the Nash family became aware that something was terribly wrong-though nobody was quite sure what to do about it. Everything would be better after the holidays, they thought. If they make it through the holidays alive ...

This new edition of Sandra Scoppettone's Such Nice People (1980) features a reproduction of the original paperback cover art and a new introduction by Grady Hendrix.

"Vivid, chilling and thrilling ... it would be hard, say, to go out for a nice quiet dinner with friends and leave it at home unfinished ... An original and sharply perceived novel of suspense."-- Fort Worth Star-Telegram

"The pressure of suspense in the last third of the book is nearly unbearable."-- Toronto Globe and Mail

"If you are a reader of horror stories, there is none more horrible than this."-- The Atlanta Journal

First published: 1980
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Pages: 297
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Book tags

Content warnings

Addiction
Alcohol Abuse
Body Horror / Body Trauma
Bullying
Child Abuse
Child Death
Child Harm
Domestic Violence
Drug Use
Eating Disorders
Emotional Abuse

Horror profile

Scary: 4 out of 5
Creepy: Not rated
Gore: Not rated
Disturbing: 4 out of 5
Weird: Not rated

How we calculate this

These are editorial estimates of intensity, informed by reading and review evidence, then checked before publication. They aren't star ratings, reader-vote averages or a measure of quality.

Each dimension runs from 1 (low) to 5 (exceptionally intense). A 5 is reserved for strongly consistent evidence. People experience horror differently.

Scary: Fear, tension and immediate threat.
Creepy: Unease, dread and an uncanny atmosphere.
Gore: Graphic injury, blood and bodily detail.
Disturbing: Upsetting ideas and lingering psychological impact.
Weird: Surreal, strange and reality-bending elements.

We draw a filled profile only when all five scores have been reviewed. Unrated does not mean mild. Missing scores are not estimated from genre tags or your saved taste. This profile isn't a complete content-warning guide.