

M.Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House masterfully merged the traditional haunted house story with the psychological breakdown of her protagonist to create something unique and terrifying that made readers question whether Hill House really was haunted, was it all in the heroine’s mind or – both?

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. 'The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable. Shirley Jackson died in her sleep at the age of 48. 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. 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. Shirley Jackson was born in California in 1916. Portraying insanity, disturbing encounters, troubling children and a sinister lottery, Shirley Jackson's work has an unmatched power to unnerve and unsettle. The creeping unease of lives squandered and the bloody glee of lives lost is chillingly captured in these five tales of casual cruelty by a master of the short story. It seemed to have had its picture taken without her it was the important creature which must be recorded and examined and gratified she was only its unwilling vehicle.'

'Her tooth, which had brought her here unerringly, seemed now the only part of her to have any identity.

'Her stories are among the most terrifying ever written' Donna Tartt Including her iconic tale The Lottery, The Tooth brings together a short selection of Shirley Jackson's most sinister stories.
