The Sundial

Description

Fans of Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House will enjoy this disquieting tale of people awaiting the end of the world in a large, isolated house Mrs Halloran has inherited the great Halloran house on the death of her son, much to the disgust of her daughter-in-law, the delight of her wicked granddaughter and the confusion of the rest of the household. But when the original owner - long dead - arrives to announce the world is ending and only the house and its occupants will be saved, they find themselves in a nightmare of strange marble statues, mysterious house guests and the beautiful, unsettling Halloran sundial which seems to be at the centre of it all. In this masterful work, Shirley Jackson blends family politics and apocalyptic terror to create a disturbing world of sinister relations and the macabre.

Shirley Jackson was born in California in 1916. When her short story, 'The Lottery', was first published in the New Yorker in 1948, readers were so horrified they sent her hate mail; it has since become one of the most iconic American stories of all time. Her first novel, The Road Through the Wall, was published in the same year and was followed by Hangsaman, The Bird's Nest, The Sundial, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, widely seen as her masterpiece. In addition to her dark, brilliant novels, she wrote lightly fictionalized magazine pieces about family life with her four children and her husband, the critic Stanley Edgar Hyman. Shirley Jackson died in 1965.

Shirley Jackson's stories are among the most terrifying ever written -- Donna Tartt A pioneer of the supernatural horror genre * Observer * She is the finest master...of the cryptic, haunted tale * The New York Times Book Review *