Today I begun to read some of her stories. I read the Lottery, the Witch, and the Renegade, creepy but good, I also ordered some other collection stories. I tried reading the Baby Bootie Circuit (anyone read that one? Please, please tell me what it is about if you did), I tried reading it on the Herald, but you need to sign up, give your home address and credit card, but I did not bother, and I cannot find any information about it online anywhere, perhaps it is included in a story collection or any biographies. Have any of you read this story or any other stories by her?

My personal favorites (in fact, my two all-time favorite stories period) are "Afternoon in Linen" (which is part of the collection The Lottery and Other Stories) and "The Arabian Nights" (which was published posthumously just a couple years ago by two of her children in a collection Let Me Tell You). "Afternoon in Linen" and "The Arabian Nights" aren't "horror" stories, but they aren't comedies either. They're about children who have something very precious stolen from them by emotionally insensitive adults.

I just finished an out-of-print collection The Magic of Shirley Jackson, which was edited by her widower, Stanley Edgar Hyman (not too well known today but a college professor and during his lifetime a highly respected critic). It includes The Bird's Nest (a novel of multiple personality disorder which might be a bit cliched post-Sybil but was probably good enough in its time), eleven stories from The Lottery and other Stories collection, and her two "suburban housewife" comic memoirs Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons. Worthwhile particularly for the "suburban housewife" comedies, and The Bird's Nest was a convenient add-on for the sake of "Jackson completeness" without having to buy it in a separate volume.

Last yeas was the Jackson centennial (her hundredth birthday), so we may see some upsurge in publications in the next few months.

I've never heard of "The Baby Bootie Circuit" and suspect it may never have been anthologized because I don't see it listed in the (incomplete) bibliography of her stories on Wikipedia. From the title, I'm wondering if it's like those "suburban housewife" memoirs.

The best single collection of Jackson is the Library of America edition, which includes the complete collection of The Lottery and Other Stories along with her two best novels, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and a generous sampling of uncollected and unpublished stories. You might be able to pick it up on-line at a reasonable discount. LoA was talking, a few years ago, about publishing a second volume but that's gone by the way as a result of the understandable desire of publishers and her children to reap some royalties with the centennial without competition from a "specialty" publisher like LoA.

I just started reading the new Jackson biography by Ruth Franklin but I've put it in abeyance pending a reread of The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

ETA: An amusing Shirley Jackson story.... When the LoA edition was published (back I think in 2010) I was looking for it at Borders, knew it was supposed to be there, but couldn't find it. After a while, I gave up and was browsing for a while through the fiction section generally when I found it, but filed under O rather than J. Some clerk had decided it should be filed under O for the editor, Joyce Carol Oates! (And we wonder why Borders went out of business?)

I will look into those. Thank you for responding, I do not know why no one else is.

I just learned of this BBC article published for Jackson's birthday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/51vl5GhK5HywWXLHkNBpgBC/paint-it-black-the-haunting-tales-of-shirley-jackson

haven't had a chance to read it yet, but one of the regulars over at Library Thing posted it to an LT Group we both belong to.

I read Life Among the Savages when I was in grade school and Raising Demons many years later. I was surprised when I read The Lottery because I always thought of her as a humorous writer.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-joy-and-terror-of-shirley-jackson/

. . . a very good review of the Ruth Franklin biography.

I've read One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts. It's very good. Quite short.

Just read, quite good. Thank you all for your responses and your suggestions, hope you are all having a good holiday season.

You're welcome. Glad you liked it.

I'm just starting The Road Through the Wall and I may get to Hangsaman in a little while. I wouldn't recommend either for a noob, though -- among the novels, start out with The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

Be cautious of the ending of the Road through the Wall. It is a good story, but not uplifting. Not the most chilling book I have ever read though, a little unnerving, but not as immense as the Lottery.

I'm actually listening to We Have Always Lived In The Castle at the moment.

I've read The Lottery and Other Stories, The Haunting of Hill House and only recently, We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I don't know how I'd missed the last one before now.