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.