The Lottery and Other Stories

Beautifully repackaged as part of the Picador Modern Classics series, this special edition is small enough to fit in your pocket and bold enough to stand out on your bookshelf. One of the most terrifying stories of the twentieth century, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker in 1948. "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. Today it is considered a classic work of short fiction, a story remarkable for its combination of subtle suspense and pitch-perfect descriptions of both the chilling and the mundane. The Lottery and Other Stories, the only collection of stories to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery" with twenty-four equally unusual short stories. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range-from the hilarious to the horrible, the unsettling to the ominous-and her power as a storyteller.