The little boy laughed excitedly, and the man leaned back and puffed at his cigar.
'Once upon a time,' he began, 'I had a little sister just like yours.' The little boy looked up at the man, nodding at every word. 'My little sister,' the man went on, 'was so pretty and nice that I loved her more then anything else in the world. So shall I tell you what I did?'
The little boy nodded more vhemently, and the mother lifted her eyes from her book and smiled, listening.
'I bought her a rocking horse and a doll and a millon lollipops,' the man said, 'and then I took her and put my hands around her neck and I pinched her and pinched her until she was dead.' " ~Excerpt from The Witch, 1949

"The idea of smashing the glass ashtray over her husband's head had never before occurred to Margaret, but now it would not leave her mind. She stirred uneasily in her chair, thinking: what a terrible thought to have, whatever made me think of such a thing? Probably a perverted affectionate gesture, and she laughed..."~Excerpt from Just an Ordinary Day, 1966.

Please feel free to start topics/post anything you would like for discussion...

NOVELS

The Road through the Wall (1948)
aka The Other Side of the Street
Hangsaman (1951)
The Bird's Nest (1954)
aka Lizzie
The Witchcraft of Salem Village (1956)
The Sundial (1958)
The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
aka The Haunting
And Baby Makes Three (1960)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)
Famous Sally: A Harlin Quist Book (1966)


COLLECTIONS

The Lottery (1949)
9 Magic Wishes (1963)
The Magic of Shirley Jackson (1966)
Come along with Me: Part of a Novel, Sixteen Stories, and Three Lectures (1968)
Three Stories (1991)
From Our Porch Swing: Poems and Illustrations (poems) (1992)
Masterpieces of Shirley Jackson (1996)
Just an Ordinary Day (1996)
Shirley Jackson Collected Short Stories (2001)

SHORT STORIES

After You, My Dear Alphonse (1943)
Afternoon in Linen (1943)
Come Dance with Me in Ireland (1943)
Colloquy (1944)
A Fine Old Firm (1944)
Trial By Combat (1944)
The Villager (1944)
Men with Their Big Shoes (1947)
Charles (1948)
The Daemon Lover (1948)
The Lottery (1948)
Pillar of Salt (1948)
The Renegade (1948)
Seven Types of Ambiguity (1948)
The Tooth (1948)
The Dummy (1949)
Elizabeth (1949)
Flower Garden (1949)
Got a Letter from Jimmy (1949)
The Intoxicated (1949)
Like Mother Used to Make (1949)
My Life with R. H. Macy (1949)
Of Course (1949)
The Witch (1949)
The Lovely House (1950)
The Summer People (1950)
Root of Evil (1953)
Bulletin (1954)
One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts (1955)
The Missing Girl (1957)
The Omen (1958)
A Great Voice Stilled (1960)
The Beautiful Stranger (1968)
The Bus
Dorothy and My Grandmother and the Sailors