Shirley jackson books

February is Women in Horror Month, and Shirley Jackson is recognized as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th century.

Which of these have you read?

The final piece in a three-part series featuring the author’s lectures on writing.

December 14, 2016 marks the 100th anniversary of Shirley Jackson’s birth. To celebrate, we’re taking a look at some of her most memorable novels and short fiction. If you asked anyone about a American short story that stuck with them for their entire lives, it would not shock me if they were to think for […]

On the 100th anniversary of the author's birth, revisit the original reviews of her haunting stories

A darkly funny account of family life from the author of The Haunting of Hill House and The Lottery 'Sometimes, in my capacity as a mother, I find myself sitting open-mouthed and terrified before my own children' As well as being a master of the macabre, Shirley Jackson was also a pitch-perfect chronicler of everyday family life. In Life Among the Savages, her caustically funny account of raising her children in a ramshackle house in Vermont, she deals with rats in the cellar, misbehaving…

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for 80 years and might for 80 more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone. Often cited…

I read this as my "book you can finish in a day" for the 2016 Reading Challenge. As expected, it's not exactly scary, but Jackson is sure good at infusing a story with a creepy atmosphere. In this work, her last completed novel before her death, she tells the story of the Blackwood family. Not so lo