Last week, the nominees for the 2019 Shirley Jackson Awards were announced in Boston, and we are over the moon to add so many sensational titles to our “To Be Read” lists!
As we’ve noted here in the past, the Shirley Jackson Awards were established in 2007, and named after the beloved and revered author of such seminal works as “The Lottery” (among a phenomenal collection of short stories), We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and The Haunting of Hill House. In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, the Shirley Jackson Awards recognize outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic. The final winners are determined by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics and academics, with input from a Board of Advisors, who are charged with selecting the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection and Edited Anthology. The final announcement of the winners will be made at Readercon, right nearby in Burlington, MA! You can click on this link here for more information on Readercon itself.
So here is a selection from the categories of winners and nominees for the 2019 Shirley Jackson Awards, with links to the titles in our catalogs. We hope you find some new books to add to your list here, and would love to help you find even more dark fiction to add to your summer reading!
NOVEL
- Everything Under, by Daisy Johnson
- In the Night Wood, by Dale Bailey
- Little Eve, by Catriona Ward (Check with your friendly public services staff to access this title!)
- Social Creature, by Tara Isabella Burton
- We Sold Our Souls, by Grady Hendrix
SINGLE-AUTHOR COLLECTION
- Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado
- She Said Destroy, by Nadia Bulkin (Check with your friendly public services staff to access this title!)
- The Dark Dark, by Samantha Hunt
- The Doll’s Alphabet, by Camilla Grudova
- Things to Do When You’re Goth in the Country, by Chavisa Woods
Be sure to check out the Shirley Jackson Awards website for a full list of nominees and more information about the awards! And, as ever, a hearty Free-For-All congratulations to all the nominated authors. We can’t wait to see who is crowned the winner at Readercon in July!