Shirley Jackson

One of the most terrifying stories of the twentieth century, Shirley Jackson's The Lottery created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker in 1948. "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. Today it is considered a classic work of short fiction, a story remarkable for its combination of subtle suspense and pitch-perfect descriptions of both the chilling and the mundane. The Lottery and Other Stories,...

"Delving deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when outside forces disrupt their delicate balance of life." --

In her celebrated fiction, Shirley Jackson explored the darkness lurking beneath the surface of small-town America. But in Life Among the Savages, she takes on the lighter side of small-town life. In this witty and warm memoir of her family's life in rural Vermont, she delightfully exposes a domestic side in cheerful contrast to her quietly terrifying fiction. With a novelist's gift for character, an unfailing maternal instinct, and her signature...

“Jackson at her best: plumbing the extraordinary from the depths of mid-twentieth-century common. [Just an Ordinary Day] is a gift to a new generation.”—San Francisco Chronicle
Acclaimed in her own time for her short story “The Lottery” and her novel The Haunting of Hill House—classics ranking with the work of Edgar Allan Poe—Shirley Jackson blazed a path for contemporary writers...

In one volume: The Haunting of Hill House, The Lottery, and much more, including We Have Always Lived in the Castle, now a major motion picture starring Taissa Farmiga and Sebastian Stan "The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable," writes A. M. Homes. "It is a place where things are not what they seem; even on a morning that is sunny and clear there is always the threat of darkness looming, of things taking a turn for the worse." In...

"The classic short story--now in full color. Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" continues to thrill and unsettle readers nearly seven decades after it was first published. By turns puzzling and harrowing, it raises troubling questions about conformity, tradition, and the specter of ritualized violence that haunts even the most bucolic, peaceful village. This graphic adaptation, published in time for Jackson's centennial, allows readers to experience...

Flashing between past and present, a fractured family confronts haunting memories of their old home and the terrifying events that drove them from it.