A haunting and psychologically driven collection from Shirley Jackson that includes her best-known story "The Lottery" At last, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" enters Penguin Classics, sixty-five years after it shocked America audiences and elicited the most responses of any piece in New Yorker history. In her gothic visions of small-town America, Jackson, the author of such masterworks as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle , turns an ordinary world into a supernatural nightmare. This eclectic collection goes beyond her horror writing, revealing the full spectrum of her literary genius. In addition to Come Along with Me , Jackson's unfinished novel about the quirky inner life of a lonely widow, it features sixteen short stories and three lectures she delivered during her last years. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. “Everything this author wrote . . . has in it the dignity and plausibility of myth. . . . Shirley Jackson knew better than any writer since Hawthorne the value of haunted things.” — The New York Times Book Review “Shirley Jackson was a bright, crafty . . . very impressive maker of stories . . . Come Along With Me is a kind of memorial to her . . . an engaging volume.” — Chicago Sunday Times “Leaves no doubt as to Miss Jackson’s craftsmanship and power . . . utterly convincing detail that breaks down the reader’s disbelief.” — Granville Hicks, Saturday Review Shirley Jackson (1916–1965) received wide critical acclaim for her short story "The Lottery," which was first published in the New Yorker in 1948. Her novels include We Have Always Lived in the Castle , The Sundial , and The Haunting of Hill House . Laura Miller is a cofounder of Salon.com, where she is a senior writer. She is the editor of The Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors and the introducer of the Penguin Classics edition of The Haunting of Hill House . From Come Along With Me : I always believe in eating when I can. I had plenty of money and no name when I got off the train and even though I had had lunch in the dining car I liked the idea of stopping off for coffee and a doughnut while I decided exactly which way I intended to go, or which way I was intended to go. I do not believe in turning one way or another without consideration, but then neither do I believe that anything is positively necessary at any given time. I got off the train with plenty of money; I needed a name and a place to go; enjoyment and excitement and a fine high gleefulness I knew I could provide on my own. A woman said to me in the train station, “My sister might want to rent a room to a nice lady; she’s got this little crippled kid.” I could use a little crippled kid, I thought, and so I said, “Where does your sister live, dear?” A fine high gleefulness; I think you understand me; I have everything I want. I sold the house at a profit. Once I got Hughie buried—my God, he was a lousy painter—I only had to make a thousand and three trips back and forth from the barn—which was a studio, which was a mess—to the house. At my age and size—both forty-four, in case it’s absolutely vital to know—I was carrying those paintings and half-finished canvasses (“This is the one the artist was working on the morning of the day he died,” and it was just as lousy as all the rest; not even imminent glowing death could help that Hughie) and books and boxes of letters and more than anything else cartons and cartons of things Hughie saved, his old dance programs and marriage licenses and fans and the like. It was none of it anything I ever wanted to see again, I promise you, but I didn’t dare throw any of it away for fear Hughie might turn up someday asking, the way they sometimes do, and knowing Hughie it would be the carbon copy of something back in 1946 he wanted. Everything he might ever possibly come around asking for went into the barn; one thousand and three trips back and forth. I am not a callous person and no one Hughie ever knew could possibly call me practical, but I had waited long enough. I knew I could sell the house. The furniture went to everyone, and I did think that was funny. They came up to me at the auction, people I had known for years, people who had come to the funeral, people who had sat on the chairs and eaten at the dining-room table and sometimes passed out on the beds, if the truth were known, and they said things like “I bought your little maple desk and anytime you want it back it’s waiting for you,” and “Listen, we picked up the silver