Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, first published in 1959, has been acclaimed as a magnificent work of unsettling fear. Dr. Montague, an esoteric professor looking for strong evidence of a 'haunting,' Theodora, his humorous assistant, Eleanor, a friendless, frail young woman well familiar with poltergeists, and Luke, the prospective heir of Hill House, are the characters in the novel. At first glance, their stay appears to be nothing more than a strange encounter with unexplainable events. But Hill House is amassing its powers, and it will soon choose one of them to call its own. Shirley Jackson was born in 1919 in San Francisco. Her short story 'The Lottery,' published in 1948, gained widespread critical acclaim. Her novels, which include The Sundial, The Bird's Nest, Hangsaman, The Road Through the Wall, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and The Haunting of Hill House, are distinguished by their realistic settings for stories that frequently combine aspects of horror and the occult. Her two nonfiction books are Raising Demons and Life Among the Savages. Come Along With Me is a compilation of stories, lectures, and excerpts from her novel, which she was working on when she died in 1965.