
The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future is whimsical and dreadful, verdant and sinister. Readers of “quiet horror” or “slow-burn horror” will enjoy this collection. The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future collects Christi Nogle’s finest psychological and supernatural horror stories. Their rural and small-town characters confront difficult pasts and look toward promising but often terrifying futures. The pieces range in genre from psychological horror through science fiction and ghost stories, but they all share fundamental qualities: feminist themes, an emphasis on voice, a focus on characters’ psychologies and a sense of the gothic in contemporary life. Stories here may recall Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Shirley Jackson’s “The Renegade,” or Kelly Link’s “Stone Animals.”
Author

Christi Nogle’s debut novel, Beulah, is out now from Cemetery Gates Media and her collection The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future is coming in early 2023 from Flame Tree Press, to be followed by Promise (mid-2023) and One Eye Opened in That Other Place (2024). Her short stories have appeared in over fifty publications including PseudoPod, Vastarien, and Dark Matter Magazine along with anthologies such as C.M Muller’s Nightscript and Flame Tree’s American Gothic. Christi is a member of the Horror Writers Association, Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, and Codex Writers’ Group. She lives in Boise, Idaho with her partner Jim and their gorgeous dogs. Follow her at christinogle.com or on Twitter @christinogle Praise for Beulah: “Nogle, like all writers with a rare knack coupled with incredible skill and imagination, makes everything she writes look easy and effortlessly ingenious. Even the Table of Contents of her latest novel, Beulah, reflects that sense of effortless ingenuity (The beginning chapter is called “When you talk to the dead”, followed by 12 month named titles, followed by the last chapter, “When you walk with the dead”). I’ve been lucky enough to publish Nogle’s short stories twice now, and I hope to publish her work many more times in the future. My initial reaction to reading this debut novel is simply this: how in the hell could this be anyone’s first novel? It’s so assured, so masterful, so in control at every level. This is not the typical mess of even the most talented writer’s first attempt at that tricky long form. This is the work of a top tier author in top form. Anyone writing a book blurb is tempted to summarize the plot and shower the book (and writer) with hyperbolic praise. I won’t do the former, and I promise you I’m not doing the latter. Nogle has all the goods, a singularly weird imagination, a tremendous sense of pacing and voice, and a mastery of clarity and control on the sentence level. Beulah will easily prove to be one of the best horror novels (never mind debut novels) of 2022. Read it. “ -Jon Padgett, author of The Secret of Ventriloquism With a skilled and unflinching hand, Nogle guides us through layers of time and experience in Beulah. Through the eyes of reluctantly “gifted” Georgie, we see what is usually hidden—the heartbreaking and terrifying—every rich and textured detail leading to a truly satisfying payoff. I will never forget this walk with the dead. — J.A.W. McCarthy, author of SOMETIMES WE’RE CRUEL AND OTHER STORIES Beulah: Beulah is the story of Georgie, an eighteen-year-old with a talent (or affliction) for seeing ghosts. Georgie and her family have had a hard time since her father died, but she and her mother Gina and sisters Tommy and Stevie are making a new start in the small town of Beulah, Idaho where Gina’s wealthy friend Ellen has set them up to help renovate an old stone schoolhouse. Georgie experiences a variety of disturbances—the town is familiar from dreams and she seems to be experiencing her mother’s memory of the place, not to mention the creepy ghost in the schoolhouse basement—but she is able to maintain, in her own laconic way, until she notices that her little sister Stevie also has the gift. Stevie is in danger from a malevolent ghost, and Georgie tries to help, but soon Georgie is the one in danger.