Name: Dark Tales
Rating: 3.774193548387097 (31 reviews)
ISBN: 9780241295427

Shirley Jackson

"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

Silje Løvli Lorentsen

And we looked at the picture of the old old house, standing dark and tall against the sky, with the windows of this very room shining faintly through the trees, and the steep winding road coming through the gates and down to the very edge of the picture. "I'm glad the glass is there", I said, giggling. "I'd hate to have a landslide start on that mountain and come down into our laps!" "Into my bed, you mean", Y said. "I don't know if I'll be able to sleep, with the old place overhead".

Molly M

absolutely INCREDIBLE. some of the best scary stories i have EVER read (and i promise i have read more scary stories than anyone else you know)

while the vibes in this were everything to me and i tore through the first few stories chasing this half-unsettled, half-thrilled rush, i crossed the midway mark fatigued by everything it kept doing to me and found  eventually that i just wanted to be freed from the pervasive atmosphere of the collection as a whole. i tried to stagger the stories so i have more time consuming other things in between but at some point i had to decide i’ve been sitting with this book for too long and finished the remaining stories without maybe savouring them much as i could have. which is a shame, bc none of this takes away from the fact that every story had more than a dash of its own quietly unfolding sense of unease and i was very, very much in love. 

whatever reservations i have about this book fall entirely on me, and i know short stories from a single author’s whole career aren’t necessarily meant to be consumed in a curated anthology like this one after one after one. none of it changes how shirley jackson might be on the way to being one of my fav writers, if she isn’t already on that list, and i know i’ll see her again very soon. 

while the vibes in this were everything to me and i tore through the first few stories chasing this half-unsettled, half-thrilled rush, i crossed the midway mark fatigued by everything it kept doing to me and found  eventually that i just wanted to be freed from the pervasive atmosphere of the collection as a whole. i tried to stagger the stories so i have more time consuming other things in between but at some point i had to decide i’ve been sitting with this book for too long and finished the remaining stories without maybe savouring them much as i could have. which is a shame, bc none of this takes away from the fact that every story had more than a dash of its own quietly unfolding sense of unease and i was very, very much in love. 

whatever reservations i have about this book fall entirely on me, and i know short stories from a single author’s whole career aren’t necessarily meant to be consumed in a curated anthology like this one after one after one. none of it changes how shirley jackson might be on the way to being one of my fav writers, if she isn’t already on that list, and i know i’ll see her again very soon. 

Steffi

I liked maybe 3 or 4 of the short stories. I dont really know what I was expecting.

The perfect read for Hallowe'en, this new hardback volume of Jackson's finest stories reveals the queen of American gothic at her unsettling, mesmerising best 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 country manor, and from the small-town apartment to the dark, dark woods...

Kath Lau

Such an amazing, gripping and definitely a must-read short story collection.

Amanda Autumn Berrey

julia

Josh Waldman

Mandy

Erik Wallace

Step into the unsettling world of Shirley Jackson this autumn with a collection of her finest, darkest short stories, revealing the queen of American gothic at her mesmerising best 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 country manor, and from the small-town apartment to the dark, dark woods...

sabina

Celestine Taevs-Nakaya

For the first time in one volume, a collection of Shirley Jackson's scariest stories, with a foreword by PEN/Hemingway Award winner Ottessa Moshfegh After the publication of her short story "The Lottery" in the New Yorker in 1948 received an unprecedented amount of attention, Shirley Jackson was quickly established as a master horror storyteller. This collection of classic and newly reprinted stories provides readers with more of her unsettling, dark tales, including the "The Possibility of Evil" and "The Summer People." In these deliciously dark stories, 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. There's something sinister in suburbia. 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.

Dark Tales

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