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Sara Kestelman reads five deliciously dark tales from the ‘US Queen of Gothic Horror’, Shirley Jackson, including her most famous and indeed infamous story, ‘The Lottery’, one of the most controversial short stories of all time.

There’s something nasty in suburbia. In these eerie and unsettling tales a village ritual turns dark; a summer lake house becomes a prison; the daily commute turns into a terrifying game of hide and seek; and a nightmarish dream becomes reality. In the haunting world of Shirley Jackson, nothing is as it seems, and nowhere is safe.

In the tradition of Christmas ghost stories, these unsettling tales will chill, unsettle and delight.

Today: a seemingly harmless elderly woman takes it upon herself to root of the evil she sees lurking in her village....

Reader: Sara Kestelman
Writer: Neglected during her lifetime, Shirley Jackson is now known as one of the greatest horror writers of the twentieth century for her unsettling short stories of the horrors lurking beneath the veneer of suburban domesticity. She’s perhaps best known for her short story, ‘The Lottery’, which on its 1948 publication, provoked a slew of hate mail but became one of the most anthologised stories of all time, as well as for her gothic horror masterpiece, The Haunting of Hill House.
Abridger: Rowan Routh
Producer: Justine Willett