"In just two decades--she died in 1965, at the age of 48--Shirley Jackson created a weird and distinctive world of fiction, one in which a grinning death's head lies just behind the smiling mask of so-called everyday life. She first displayed her genius for conjuring daylight demons in The Lottery, the classic collection whose world-famous title story is an allegory of bloodlust and blind obedience to tradition. She perfected it in two great Gothic novels: The Haunting of Hill House, the tale of an achingly empathetic young woman chosen by a haunted house to be its new tenant, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, the unrepentant confessions of Miss Merricat Blackwood, a cunning adolescent who has gone to quite unusual lengths to preserve her ideal of family happiness. All three books are here, together with 21 other stories and sketchest--two of them previously uncollected--that present the author in all her many modes: unrivalled mistress of the macabre, groundbreaking domestic humorist, and subtle social satirist."--Jacket.