Great Paperbacks I Have Loved-- the Work of Shirley Jackson

I'm still loading up Expedit, reordering, re shelving, etc. And reading. Reading, reading, reading.

Today I'm posting images of the editions of Shirley Jackson paperbacks I love. My first introduction to Shirley Jackson was through the works of Stephen King; when I was a young reader I loved King, and I wanted to read what he read, and so his book Danse Macabre was like the Rosetta Stone of horror (and to a large extent, science fiction). He was the first author that I would hunt around for every scrap of writing, every review, and every interview, and Kind was always extremely generous in sharing his passions about what he read. The reading list from Danse Macabre was where I started, and one of the first books I read on the list was The Haunting of Hill House, which to this day remains one of my favorite novels, and created a life-long love of haunted house stories. I'll read just about any haunted house story that comes my way, but few even come close to the perfect gem that is The Haunting of Hill House (I just finished writing a haunted house novel, hopefully coming soon to a bookstore near you.

This is isn't the edition I first read, but it is my favorite of the three I own. The cover is a still from the movie The Haunting , which I thought was a pretty good adaptation of the novel. I read this edition again every couple years.



I posted the cover of We Have Always Lived in the Castle last blog, but The Sundial is a close third for me. Nothing like an end of the world dark comedy to cheer one up:



Here's the psychedelic cover of The Bird's Nest, a novel of split personalities:


I just this moment realized how much it reminds me of the cover of Ssssh by Ten Years After:



Groovy, Man.

Here's Hangsaman:



Which someone smarter than me could draw parallels with Catcher in the Rye, except in this Holden is a girl, and instead of doing madman stuff actually does insane stuff.

Hmm, I still haven't found my neat old copy of The Road through the Wall, and I can't find the cover online--I'll scan it when it turns up!

But then, there's this:



Great title, great cover. Think I'll read it again.