While Gillian Flynn remains best known for Gone Girl, many of us were fans long before that novel—and movie—about a marriage gone very wrong set against the background of economic turndown.

Flynn’s 2006 novel Sharp Objects is a terrifically terrifying story about a serial killer in Wind Gap, Missouri, and the reporter who returns to her hometown to cover it.

The reporter, Camille Preaker, has been living in Chicago and the trip home brings back far too many memories.

Camille had a breakdown following the death of her sister, Marian, who died young. Eventually, she was sent to a psychiatric hospital after years of self-harm.

You might guess that her family is quite dysfunctional.

That family includes Camille’s half sister, Amma, who acts like the perfect daughter at home while being as nasty as she can to others.

Mother Adora, is cold and distant to Camille, while doting on Amma. Adora comes from a wealthy family that owns many businesses. Wealth has brought her power but also misery.

(On a personal note, I love that Flynn, who grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, set two of her novels in the Show Me State, which is where I am from. Gone Girl was set in the southeast Missouri town of Cape Girardeau, about 30 miles from my hometown, and also parts of southwest Missouri.)

Sharp Objects won the Crime Writers’ Association’s New Blood and Ian Fleming Steel Daggers awards and was nominated for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar for Best First Novel by an American Writer and the Crime Writers' Association's Duncan Lawrie award.

Sharp Objects now makes its way to television as a limited eight-episode series on HBO, adapted by Flynn and Marti Noxon. IndieWire described the series as "about as close to a summer blockbuster as 2018 TV will get."

Sharp Objects premieres July 8 on HBO.

The cast is top drawer, including Amy Adams, Patricia Clarkson, Chris Messina, Elizabeth Perkins, Eliza Scanlen, Madison Davenport, Matt Craven, and Taylor John Smith.

Here is a newly released trailer: 

This isn’t the first time that Sharp Objects was considered for a television project. According to sources, British director Andrea Arnold was reported to be directing an adaptation of the novel in 2008 for French production company Pathé. But the project never materialized.