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On June 28, 1948, The New Yorker published a short story about a village that gathers on a summer morning for its annual lottery. It drew more letters than any story the magazine had ever printed, most of them, as Shirley Jackson put it, bewilderment, speculation and old-fashioned abuse. She wrote six novels, two comic memoirs about raising four children, and dozens of stories that do the same trick: an ordinary morning, and then something underneath it. This guide covers all ten books in order, her best-known short stories and which collection each one is in, and where to start.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 books · 200+ stories · Female authors · 1948–1968 · Updated September 2026
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Quick answer
Shirley Jackson published ten books: six novels, one short story collection, two comic memoirs and a posthumous volume. Her short stories are collected in The Lottery and Other Stories (1949), the only collection published in her lifetime, and in four posthumous volumes: Come Along with Me (1968), Just an Ordinary Day (1996), Let Me Tell You (2015) and Dark Tales (2016). Her best-known stories are “The Lottery”, “The Summer People”, “The Daemon Lover”, “Charles” and “The Possibility of Evil”. Start with The Lottery and Other Stories.
Where to Start with Shirley Jackson
If you want the short stories
→ The Lottery and Other Stories (1949).
If you want one novel
→ We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962).
If you want the haunted house
→ The Haunting of Hill House (1959).
If you want to laugh
→ Life Among the Savages (1953), or the novel The Sundial (1958).
If you want a short modern selection
→ Dark Tales (2016), seventeen stories in one slim Penguin Classic.
All 10 Shirley Jackson Books, in Order
The Road Through the Wall
Her first novel, about a comfortable California suburb in 1936 where a wall comes down and the neighbourhood's civility comes down with it. Drawn from the Burlingame street where she grew up, and already recognisably her: no ghosts, just neighbours.
The Lottery and Other Stories
Twenty-five stories, including “The Lottery”, “The Daemon Lover”, “Charles” and “Pillar of Salt”. The only collection of her stories published in her lifetime, and the best single book to start with. Joyce Carol Oates has called “The Daemon Lover” deeper and more disturbing than “The Lottery” itself.
Start here. It has the famous story and eight or nine better ones.
— LisanneHangsaman
Natalie Waite leaves home for a women's college and slowly comes apart, until a girl called Tony appears who may or may not exist. Jackson drew on her husband's teaching at Bennington and on the disappearance of a student there in 1946.
Life Among the Savages
A funny, fictionalised account of running a household with four children in Vermont, first written as magazine pieces for women's magazines. The tone is the opposite of her fiction, which is exactly why it is worth reading: the same eye, pointed at the same domestic life, with the dread turned into comedy.
The Bird's Nest
Elizabeth Richmond, a young woman working in a museum, begins receiving letters from someone who knows too much about her, and splits into four personalities under the care of an unreliable doctor. One of the earliest novels to take dissociative identity as its subject.
Raising Demons
The sequel to Life Among the Savages: more children, a bigger house, a Little League team and a PTA. Together the two memoirs made her a household name in 1950s America, at the same time as she was writing some of the darkest fiction of the decade.
The Sundial
The Halloran family barricade themselves inside their great house after an aunt receives a message that the world will end, and set about deciding who deserves to survive. Her funniest novel and her cruellest, and the most underrated book she wrote.
Read it if you like your horror funny. It is the one people miss.
— LisanneThe Haunting of Hill House
Four people spend a summer in a house that has a reputation, among them Eleanor Vance, who has spent eleven years caring for her mother and has nowhere else to be. It has one of the most famous opening paragraphs in English, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and is the book Stephen King has repeatedly named as one of the finest horror novels ever written.
Read it before you watch anything. Both films and the Netflix series change the story substantially.
— LisanneWe Have Always Lived in the Castle
Merricat Blackwood, her sister Constance and their uncle live alone in a house the village hates, six years after the rest of the family died at dinner. Time named it one of the ten best novels of the year, and many readers, myself included, think it is her best.
If you only read one Shirley Jackson book, make it this one rather than Hill House.
— LisanneCome Along with Me
Published three years after her death and edited by her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman. It contains the opening of the novel she was writing when she died, about a widow who moves to a new city and starts again, along with sixteen stories, among them “The Lottery”, and three lectures she gave on writing.
Shirley Jackson's Best-Known Short Stories, and Where to Find Them
Her stories are scattered across five collections, which is why they are so hard to track down. These are the ones worth reading first.
- “The Lottery” (1948) — a village gathers for its annual lottery on a June morning. The most anthologised American short story of the twentieth century. In The Lottery and Other Stories, Come Along with Me and Dark Tales.
- “The Summer People” (1950) — an elderly couple decide to stay at their lake cottage after Labor Day, and the village quietly closes around them. In Come Along with Me and Dark Tales.
- “The Daemon Lover” (1949) — a woman spends her wedding day looking for the man who was supposed to marry her. Joyce Carol Oates rates it above “The Lottery”. In The Lottery and Other Stories.
- “Charles” (1948) — a small boy comes home from kindergarten with stories about a classmate. Two pages, and the funniest thing she wrote. In The Lottery and Other Stories.
- “The Possibility of Evil” (1965) — a respectable old woman keeps her town in order by writing anonymous letters. Published after her death and given an Edgar Award. In Just an Ordinary Day and Dark Tales.
- “Pillar of Salt” and “The Tooth” (1948–49) — two stories about women coming apart in New York. In The Lottery and Other Stories. Read about that collection →
In What Order to Read Shirley Jackson
Nothing she wrote is a series, so order is a matter of taste rather than plot. The one thing I would not do is start with The Road Through the Wall: it is the least characteristic book she wrote.
A reading path
1. The Lottery and Other Stories (1949)
2. We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)
3. The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
4. The Sundial (1958)
5. Life Among the Savages (1953)
6. Hangsaman (1951) and The Bird's Nest (1954)
Where to Find the Rest of Shirley Jackson's Short Stories
She published more than 200 stories in magazines, and only twenty-five of them made it into a book while she was alive. Everything else was gathered afterwards, mostly by her children from her papers. These are the collections worth owning, plus her two children's books and the Library of America editions.
Open a form with the + to see every book in it.
Story collections published after her death
4
4 books · 1996–2018
Just an Ordinary Day (1996)
54 stories from her papers at the Library of Congress, half of them never published before; edited by her children.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings (2015)
Stories, essays, lectures and drawings, most of them previously unpublished.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Dark Tales (2016)
A Penguin Classics selection of seventeen of her most unsettling stories, a good short way in.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
The Missing Girl (2018)
A Penguin Modern pocket edition of three stories.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
For children
2
2 books · 1956–1963
The Witchcraft of Salem Village (1956)
A history of the Salem trials, written for young readers.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
9 Magic Wishes (1963)
A picture book, later reissued with illustrations by her grandson Miles Hyman.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Collected editions
2
2 books · 2010–2020
Shirley Jackson: Novels and Stories (2010)
The Library of America volume, edited by Joyce Carol Oates: The Lottery, Hill House, Castle and other stories.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Four Novels of the 1940s & 50s (2020)
The second Library of America volume: The Road Through the Wall, Hangsaman, The Bird's Nest and The Sundial.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Quick facts about Shirley Jackson
- Born
- December 14, 1916, San Francisco, California
- Died
- August 8, 1965, North Bennington, Vermont, aged 48
- Education
- Syracuse University, 1940
- Married
- Stanley Edgar Hyman, literary critic; they had four children
- Books
- 10, from The Road Through the Wall (1948) to Come Along with Me (1968)
- Best known for
- “The Lottery” (1948), which drew more letters than any story The New Yorker had published
- Award
- Edgar Award for “The Possibility of Evil” (1966), given after her death
- Named after her
- The Shirley Jackson Award, established in 2007 for psychological suspense and horror
- Influenced
- Stephen King, Richard Matheson, Neil Gaiman and Carmen Maria Machado
How Shirley Jackson Wrote: The Horror Is the Neighbours
There is almost no gore in Shirley Jackson, and for long stretches no supernatural element at all. What frightens in her work is social: a village that agrees on something, a family that closes ranks, a woman nobody quite believes. “The Lottery” contains no monster. Neither does We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The threat is the people who live nearby, behaving reasonably.
She wrote it from inside that life. In North Bennington she was the professor's wife with four children, cooking and driving and writing in the gaps, and she turned that domesticity into two bestselling comic memoirs at the same time as she was writing her bleakest fiction. The two bodies of work are usually treated separately; they are better read together, because they are about the same house.
Her last years were hard: agoraphobia kept her largely at home, and she died of heart failure at 48, with a novel unfinished. Her reputation has only grown since. Stephen King dedicated Firestarter to her, the Shirley Jackson Award has been given in her name since 2007, and writers from Neil Gaiman to Carmen Maria Machado keep pointing back at her.
Frequently asked questions about Shirley Jackson's books
What are Shirley Jackson's best short stories?
“The Lottery” (1948) is by far the best known. After that: “The Summer People”, “The Daemon Lover”, “Charles”, “Pillar of Salt”, “The Tooth” and “The Possibility of Evil”, which won an Edgar Award after her death. Most of them are in The Lottery and Other Stories (1949) or the Penguin Classics selection Dark Tales (2016).
Which Shirley Jackson short story collection should I read?
The Lottery and Other Stories (1949), the only collection published in her lifetime, with twenty-five stories including “The Lottery”. If you want something shorter and more modern, Dark Tales (2016) gathers seventeen of her most unsettling stories in one slim volume.
How many short stories did Shirley Jackson write?
More than 200, published in magazines from The New Yorker to women's magazines such as Good Housekeeping. Only twenty-five appeared in book form during her lifetime. The rest were gathered after her death, largely by her children from her papers at the Library of Congress.
What are Shirley Jackson's books in order?
In order of publication: The Road Through the Wall (1948), The Lottery and Other Stories (1949), Hangsaman (1951), Life Among the Savages (1953), The Bird's Nest (1954), Raising Demons (1957), The Sundial (1958), The Haunting of Hill House (1959), We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962), Come Along with Me (1968). Four further story collections appeared after her death: Just an Ordinary Day (1996), Let Me Tell You (2015), Dark Tales (2016) and The Missing Girl (2018).
How many novels did Shirley Jackson write?
Six: The Road Through the Wall (1948), Hangsaman (1951), The Bird's Nest (1954), The Sundial (1958), The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962). A seventh was unfinished when she died and was published as Come Along with Me (1968).
What is The Lottery about?
On a clear June morning, the three hundred residents of a village gather in the square for the annual lottery, an old custom nobody questions. Published in The New Yorker on June 28, 1948, it drew more letters than any story the magazine had printed, most of them hostile, and it has been read in American classrooms ever since.
What is the story Summer People about?
“The Summer People” (1950) follows an elderly New York couple who decide, for the first time, to stay on at their lake cottage after Labor Day, and find the village steadily withdrawing everything they depend on. It is in Come Along with Me and Dark Tales.
What is Just an Ordinary Day?
Just an Ordinary Day (1996) is a posthumous collection of 54 stories, about half of them never published before, put together by her children Laurence Jackson Hyman and Sarah Hyman DeWitt from her papers. Many readers rate it as the best of the posthumous volumes.
What is Come Along with Me?
Come Along with Me (1968) is the volume her husband, the critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, edited after her death. It contains the opening chapters of the novel she was writing when she died, sixteen short stories including “The Lottery”, and three lectures on writing.
Which Shirley Jackson book should I read first?
The Lottery and Other Stories (1949) if you want the short fiction, or We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) if you want a novel. The Haunting of Hill House (1959) is the most famous, but Castle is the better book.
What did Shirley Jackson write besides horror?
Two comic memoirs about raising four children in Vermont, Life Among the Savages (1953) and Raising Demons (1957), which were bestsellers in their day. She also wrote a history of the Salem witch trials for young readers and a children's picture book.
When did Shirley Jackson die?
Shirley Jackson died of heart failure on August 8, 1965, at her home in North Bennington, Vermont, at the age of 48, leaving a novel unfinished.
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Footnotes
- Shirley Jackson — Wikipedia
- The Lottery and Other Stories — Wikipedia
- The Lottery — Wikipedia
- Shirley Jackson — Britannica
- Shirley Jackson: Novels and Stories — Library of America
- Your Complete Guide to Shirley Jackson Books and Stories — Book Riot
- Shirley Jackson, summary bibliography — ISFDB
Bibliography last verified 10 September 2026.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all hers.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.”
— Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
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