The Lottery and Other Stories
Back Cover Text:AUTHOR OF The Haunting of Hill House
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 short stories from the legendary Shirley Jackson. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range - from the hilarious to the horrible, the unsettling to the ominous - and showcase a true master at the height of her haunting powers.
"The horror story...says it's okay to join the mob, to become the total tribal being, to destroy the outsider. It has never been done better or more literally than in Shirley Jackson's short story 'The Lottery.'" - STEPHEN KING, Danse Macabre
"Shirley Jackson [is] unparalleled...as leader in the field of beautifully written, quiet, cumulative shudders." - DOROTHY PARKER, Esquire
"Shirley Jackson's stories are among the most terrifying ever written." - DONNA TARTT
"One of [the twentieth] century's most luminous and strange American writers...Shirley Jackson wrote about the mundane evils hidden in everyday life." - JONATHAN LETHEM, Salon
"An amazing writer...If you haven't read [Jackson]...you have missed out on something marvelous." - NEIL GAIMAN