The Worst is Yet to Come

The Worst is Yet to Come

2019 Bram Stoker Award® Nominee for Superior Achievement in a Novel For most of her fourteen years, Tasha Davis has languished in the rural-suburban town of Skillute, Washington. Her parents offer plenty of comfortable--if stifling--emotional support, but what she needs is a best friend.In her final year at Clark Middle School, Tasha meets a strange, new classmate. Briar Kenny is the self-styled rebel Tasha wants to be, and the Davises are the kind of close-knit family Briar covets. A moment of unexpected violence spawns a secret between the two girls and awakens a mystery from the past.Unknown to Tasha and Briar, their secret also attracts something monstrous from a forgotten corner of Skillute. The town is haunted by its history, scarred with the lingering spirit of broken and scattered families, abandoned real estate ventures, and old scores never settled between neighbors. But there's more to the place than memory and legend. Beneath the landscape something malignant rages, and it will stop at nothing to find a route into the physical world. "S.P. Miskowski returns to Skillute with The Worst is Yet to Come , a gripping, devastating tale about bad choices and deadly consequences, about unhallowed ground and the bad things that have us in their sights. I stayed up late to keep reading it, and when I was done, flipped right back to the first page to start it again. A tour-de-force thriller with horrors that lodge like a bullet in your heart. I've been telling anyone who'll listen that Miskowski belongs on the bestseller shelves with King and in the classics with Shirley Jackson. This book is irrefutable evidence." - Matthew M. Bartlett, author of Gateways to Abomination "Although S.P. Miskowski's The Worst is Yet to Come has ghosts and witches in it, the real horrors come from high school bullies, drunken stepfathers, casual murders, and disintegrating families. Miskowski is an absolute master at meshing the magical and the mundane, and this book is, to put it simply, deeply frightening." - Lisa Morton, six-time Bram Stoker Award winner "The Worst is Yet to Come is a beautifully crafted and horrifying tale. Miskowski's characters jump off the page vivid and fully alive in their little town. This novel stands alone but is filled with the delights and horrors of bumping into old friends or long lost family members for anyone who has read the Skillute Cycle. Revisiting Skillute is like going home for the holidays...sometimes it's a pleasure, but as much as you might love them, sometimes people and places never change." - Kate Jonez, author of Lady Bits and Ceremony of Flies "S.P. Miskowski brings us back to witch-haunted Skillute, and I couldn't be happier. What I love about Miskowski's writing is that no one is innocent; every character is her own haunted house, with closets full of skeletons pounding to get out. This is horror fiction for grown-ups: it doesn't hold your hand, and it doesn't flinch from consequences. Miskowski at her best." -- Nathan Ballingrud, author of The Visible Filth " The Worst is Yet to Come is a haunting, melancholy tale, at once both immersive and reflective. Profound and heartbreaking in the best sense, this is a story whose characters stayed with me far beyond reading them on the page. S.P. Miskowski's stories always leave me feeling just a little bit changed for the better." - John Palisano, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Ghost Heart S.P. Miskowski's second novel, I Wish I Was Like You , was named This Is Horror Novel of the Year and received a Charles Dexter Award for Favorite Novel of 2017 from Strange Aeons . Her debut novel, Knock Knock , and three related novellas ( Delphine Dodd , Astoria , In the Light ) comprise the Skillute Cycle, set in the same fictional town as The Worst Is Yet to Come . Her books have received three Shirley Jackson Award nominations and a Bram Stoker Award nomination, and she is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Her books are available from Omnium Gatherum and JournalStone/Trepidatio.