We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Author Shirley Jackson has thrilled fans of horror and intrigue for decades with her superbly crafted stories and has even inspired such authors as Neil Gaiman and Stephen King. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a classic tale of gothic horror sure to delight fans everywhere and has been optioned for film.

Six years after four family members died of arsenic poisoning, the three remaining Blackwoods--elder, agoraphobic sister Constance, wheelchair-bound Uncle Julian, and eighteen-year-old Mary Katherine, or, Merricat--live together in pleasant isolation. Merricat has developed an idiosyncratic system of rules and protective magic to guard the estate against intrusions from hostile villagers. But one day a stranger arrives--cousin Charles, with his eye on the Blackwood fortune--and manages to penetrate into their carefully shielded lives. Unable to drive him away by either polite or occult means, Merricat adopts more desperate methods, resulting in crisis, tragedy, and the revelation of a terrible secret. SHIRLEY JACKSON (1919-1965), a celebrated writer of horror, wrote such classic novels as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, ''The Lottery.'' Her work has been adapted to film, television, and theater.