Overview

A powerful collection of short stories by Shirley Jackson The Lottery, one of the most terrifying stories of the twentieth century, created a sensation when it was first published in the New Yorker. Powerful and haunting, and nights of unrest were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Jackson's lifetime, unites The Lottery with twenty-four equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate her remarkable range--from the hilarious to the truly horrible--and power as a storyteller.

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9781483033327

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In her art, as in her life, Shirley Jackson was an absolute original. She listened to her own voice, kept her own counsel, isolated herself from all intellectual and literary currents...She was unique. -- Newsweek The stories remind one of the elemental terrors of childhood. -- International Herald Tribune The voice work of Cassandra Campbell, Gabrielle de Cuir, Kathe Mazur, and Stefan Rudnicki - was...superb. The problem was that these stories were such breathtaking marvels that they made virtually everything...seem trivial and inconsequential. -- Washington Post Jackson's great gift is not to create a world of fantasy and terror, but rather to discover the existence of the grotesque in the ordinary world. The grotesque is so powerful here just because it takes off from everyday life and constantly returns there until we do not know ourselves quite where we are. -- Elizabeth Janeway, author and literary critic If you listen to this audiobook to hear the title story, you won't be disappointed. But it's fortunate that you'll get to listen to twenty-four other wonderful stories before hearing 'The Lottery.' With masterful performances, narrators Cassandra Campbell, Gabrielle de Cuir, Kathe Mazur, and Stefan Rudnicki bring to life the diverse characters and tales that make this collection so powerful and entrancing. Each narrator brings a different but highly complementary style to the material, giving life and meaning to Jackson's characters and allowing listeners to appreciate the breadth of this work. Campbell's performance of 'The Lottery' is particularly satisfying. She uses an even, almost calming, tone that contrasts with terror of the story and allows it to develop to its unforgettable conclusion. As for the other stories, each qualifies as a superb second best. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award. -- AudioFile The creepy, dangerous fiction of Jackson is brilliantly encapsulated by this quietly devastating story in which a community, following an unquestioned ritual of generations, wreaks havoc on itself-just as Schiff describes in her nonfiction account of a close-knit town, a tragedy, and the seemingly ever-present wish to inflict harm...The willingness to go along with, even participate, in disaster echoes the most disturbing aspects of the period Schiff recounts. -- Library Journal

The creepy, dangerous fiction of Jackson is brilliantly encapsulated by this quietly devastating story in which a community, following an unquestioned ritual of generations, wreaks havoc on itself-just as Schiff describes in her nonfiction account of a close-knit town, a tragedy, and the seemingly ever-present wish to inflict harm...The willingness to go along with, even participate, in disaster echoes the most disturbing aspects of the period Schiff recounts. -- Library Journal If you listen to this audiobook to hear the title story, you won't be disappointed. But it's fortunate that you'll get to listen to twenty-four other wonderful stories before hearing 'The Lottery.' With masterful performances, narrators Cassandra Campbell, Gabrielle de Cuir, Kathe Mazur, and Stefan Rudnicki bring to life the diverse characters and tales that make this collection so powerful and entrancing. Each narrator brings a different but highly complementary style to the material, giving life and meaning to Jackson's characters and allowing listeners to appreciate the breadth of this work. Campbell's performance of 'The Lottery' is particularly satisfying. She uses an even, almost calming, tone that contrasts with terror of the story and allows it to develop to its unforgettable conclusion. As for the other stories, each qualifies as a superb second best. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award. -- AudioFile Jackson's great gift is not to create a world of fantasy and terror, but rather to discover the existence of the grotesque in the ordinary world. The grotesque is so powerful here just because it takes off from everyday life and constantly returns there until we do not know ourselves quite where we are. -- Elizabeth Janeway, author and literary critic The voice work of Cassandra Campbell, Gabrielle de Cuir, Kathe Mazur, and Stefan Rudnicki - was...superb. The problem was that these stories were such breathtaking marvels that they made virtually everything...seem trivial and inconsequential. -- Washington Post The stories remind one of the elemental terrors of childhood. -- International Herald Tribune In her art, as in her life, Shirley Jackson was an absolute original. She listened to her own voice, kept her own counsel, isolated herself from all intellectual and literary currents...She was unique. -- Newsweek

Author Information

Shirley Jackson (1919-1965), a celebrated writer of horror, wrote such classic novels as The Haunting of Hill House and The Bird's Nest, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, The Lottery. She has influenced such writers as Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and Richard Matheson. Cassandra Campbell has won multiple Audie Awards, Earphones Awards, and the prestigious Odyssey Award for narration. She was been named a Best Voice by AudioFile magazine and in 2018 was inducted in Audible's inaugural Narrator Hall of Fame. Gabrielle de Cuir, an Audie and Earphones Award-winning narrator, has narrated over three hundred titles and specializes in fantasy, humor, and titles requiring extensive foreign language and accent skills. Kathe Mazur, actress in film, theater, and television, has won several Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. Stefan Rudnicki is a Grammy-winning audiobook producer and a multi-award-winning narrator, named one of AudioFile's Golden Voices.

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