Shirley Jackson

The story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its...

"One of the darkest, most nightmarish stories of the twentieth century, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" created a sensation when it was first published in 1948. Now celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary, this lucid tale of a sleepy town's annual lottery--and the monstrous desires it awakens--endures as an essential classic of American fiction. The Lottery and Other Stories unites "The Lottery" with twenty-four wonderfully strange and equally terrifying...

"In a hilariously charming domestic memoir, America's celebrated master of terror turns to a different kind of fright: raising children. 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...

"In just two decades--she died in 1965, at the age of 48--Shirley Jackson created a weird and distinctive world of fiction, one in which a grinning death's head lies just behind the smiling mask of so-called everyday life. She first displayed her genius for conjuring daylight demons in The Lottery, the classic collection whose world-famous title story is an allegory of bloodlust and blind obedience to tradition. She perfected it in two great Gothic...

"Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American authors of the last hundred years and among our greatest writers of the female experience. This extraordinary compilation of personal correspondence has all the hallmarks of Jackson's beloved fiction, and also features family photographs and Shirley's own illustrations. Written over the course of nearly three decades, from Jackson's college years to three months before her premature death at the...

"Pepper Street is a really nice, safe California neighborhood. The houses are tidy and the lawns are neatly mowed. Of course, the country club is close by, and lots of pleasant folks live there. The only problem is they knocked down the wall at the end of the street to make way for a road to a new housing development. Now, that's not good, it's just not good at all. Satirically exploring what happens when a smug suburban neighborhood is breached by...

Merricat, Constance and their Uncle Julian live in isolation after experiencing a family tragedy six years earlier. When cousin Charles arrives to steal the family fortune, he also threatens a dark secret they've been hiding.