No Worst, There Is None
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
2015 Arthur Ellis Award — Nominated, Best First Novel
A terrible tragedy tears a family apart.
In a serene city in the extravagant mid-eighties, the privileged Warne family is victimized when their talented and artistic eleven-year-old daughter Lizbett is sexually slain. How can any family endure such horror?
In an intimate exploration of grief, the surviving family members struggle with their mourning. Hildy, a loving but abused Great Dane, also in need of healing, joins the family and becomes part of their journey back to normalcy.
Meanwhile, the police search in vain for the murderer, Melvyn Searle, who is on his own journey, hiding in plain sight, feeling invincible, and hatching new plans as he draws closer to the family and stalks the Warnes’ younger daughter, Darcy.
A work that challenges our reason, our emotions, and our spirit, No Worst, There Is None is a novel inspired by real-life events.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former newspaper columnist McBride (Dandelions Help) has written a debut that is a compelling exploration of a family's grief after the 11-year-old daughter is brutally sexually assaulted and then murdered. In an author's note, McBride explains that the book was inspired by a crime that touched her own family in 1986 when the friend of one of her young daughters was similarly attacked and slain. The novel follows the Warne family, who live a life of privilege and relative innocence in the mid '80s in an undisclosed North American city. Their lives are shattered the day the oldest daughter, Lizbett, fails to come home from a trip to the local library. Told from various points of view including Lizbett's mother and father, her sister, other characters connected to the family, and, disturbingly, the murderer, Melvyn Searle, who goes on to murder another girl it is graphic, heart- and gut-wrenching reading, yet also about love and grief, motivation and healing, and the endurance of family and the human spirit.
