‘I am tired of writing dainty little biographical things that pretend that I am a trim little housewife in a Mother Hubbard stirring up appetizing messes over a wood stove. I live in a dank old place with a ghost that stomps around in the attic room we’ve never gone into (I think it’s walled up) and the first thing I did when we moved in was to make charms in black crayon on all the door sills and window ledges to keep out demons, and was successful in the main’

The dark, unsettling writings of Shirley Jackson have established her as one of the great literary voices of the twentieth century. This new volume of uncollected and recently discovered works brings together a treasure trove of short stories - each a miniature masterwork of unease - with candid, fascinating essays, lectures, articles and drawings.

Here an everyday world of dinner parties, children’s playgrounds and bridge games is made unfamiliar and troubling. Strange encounters occur, unwanted visitors arrive, places and objects take on lives of their own. And, in pieces describing everything from her large, exasperating family to the small-town inspiration for her infamous story The Lottery, Jackson also displays a gleeful, sharp humour.