The Worst Is Yet to Come
“S.P. 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
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
S. P. Miskowski
S. P. Miskowski's debut novel, Knock Knock, and her first novella, Delphine Dodd, have been shortlisted for a Shirley Jackson Award. Both books are part of The Skillute Cycle, which includes two more novellas: Astoria and In the Light. All four books are published by Omnium Gatherum Media.
Rated by Black Static book critic Peter Tennant as "one of the most interesting and original writers to emerge in recent years," Miskowski has written short stories published in Supernatural Tales, Horror Bound Magazine, Identity Theory, The Absent Willow Review, New Times, Fine Madness, Other Voices, the anthology Detritus and upcoming anthologies Cassilda's Song (edited by Joseph S. Pulver Sr.), October Dreams 2 (published by Cemetery Dance) and a themed anthology edited by James Everington. With Kate Jonez she co-edited the anthology Little Visible Delight. Her work has received a Swarthout Award and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships.