Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson’s beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family’s dark secret . . . The inhabitants of the Rochester house wield a strange power over their neighbors. Taking readers 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 a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

The greatest haunted house story ever written, the inspiration for a 10-part Netflix series directed by Mike Flanagan and starring Michiel Huisman, Carla Gugino, and Timothy Hutton 

First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is 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 powers--and soon it will choose one of them to make its own. 

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Haunting of Hill House

Presents an unabridged selection from the story about a seemingly ordinary village that participates in a yearly lottery to determine a sacrificial victim.

The Lottery

Timid, seventeen-year-old Natalie confronts horror after coming under the power of a rebellious, mysterious girl

Hangsman

"There's something nasty in suburbia. In these deliciously dark tales, the daily commute turns into a nightmarish game of hide and seek, the loving wife hides homicidal thoughts and the concerned citizen might just be an infamous serial killer. In the haunting world of Shirley Jackson, nothing is as it seems and nowhere is safe, from the city streets to the crumbling country pile, and from the small-town apartment to the dark, dark woods . . ."

Dark Tales

Shirley Jackson's Hangsaman is a story of lurking disquiet and haunting disorientation, inspired by the real-life, unsolved disappearance of a female college student. 'Shirley Jackson's stories are among the most terrifying ever written' Donna Tartt, author of The Goldfinch Natalie Waite, daughter of a mediocre writer and a neurotic housewife, is increasingly unsure of her place in the world. In the midst of adolescence she senses a creeping darkness in her life, which will spread among nightmarish parties, poisonous college cliques and the manipulations of the intellectual men who surround her, as her identity gradually crumbles. This edition includes a Foreword by Francine Prose. Shirley Jackson's chilling tales have the power to unsettle and terrify unlike any other. She was born in California in 1916. When her short story The Lottery was first published in The New Yorker in 1948, readers were so horrified they sent her hate mail; it has since become one of the greatest American stories of all time. Her first novel, The Road Through the Wall, was published in the same year and was followed by five more: Hangsaman, The Bird's Nest, The Sundial, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, widely seen as her masterpiece. Shirley Jackson died in her sleep at the age of 48. 'An amazing writer' Neil Gaiman 'The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable ... 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' A. M. Homes 'Shirley Jackson is unparalleled as a leader in the field of beautifully written, quiet, cumulative shudders' Dorothy Parker

Hangsaman

Ruth Franklin

From the renowned author of “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House comes a spectacular new volume of unpublished and uncollected work. Since her death in 1965, Shirley Jackson's place in the landscape of twentieth-century fiction has only grown, and nowLet Me Tell You brings together her uniquely eerie short stories, frank and inspiring lectures on writing, comic essays about her family, and revelatory personal letters and drawings.

New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings

Let Me Tell You

The Bird's Nest

The Halloran family waits for the end of the world after Aunt Fanny is told its exact date in a vision

The Sundial

Of course, no one would want to say anything about a girl like this that's missing . . . ' Malice, paranoia and creeping dread lie beneath the surface of ordinary American life in these chilling miniature masterworks of unease.

The Missing Girl

Abbiamo sempre vissuto nel castello

"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 age of forty-eight, these letters become the autobiography Shirley Jackson never wrote, full of subversive wit, vivid imagination, and gorgeous prose. Jackson spent much of her adult life as a faculty wife and mother of four in Vermont, and the landscape here is the everyday: trips to the dentist and dream vacations, overdue taxes and broken Christmas tree bulbs, new dogs and new babies, fad diets and recipes for fudge. But in recounting these events to family, friends, and colleagues, she turns them into remarkable stories: entertaining, revealing, and wise. This intimate collection holds the beguiling prism of Shirley Jackson--writer and teacher, mother and daughter, neighbor and wife--up to the light"--

The Letters of Shirley Jackson

Life among the Savages

L'incubo di Hill House

Describes the social and religious conditions surrounding the Salem witch hunts, the extensive trials and executions, and the aftermath of the hysteria.

The Witchcraft of Salem Village

The author offers a humorous account of her experiences as she, her husband, and their four young children moved from an apartment in the city to a big house in rural Vermont

Shirley Jackson

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