The 2017 Shirley Jackson Awards winners were announced July 15, 2018 during Readercon 29 at the Quincy Marriott in Quincy MA.,

As we noted last year,  the Shirley Jackson Awards are 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.  This year’s nominees represent some of the most intriguing, rule-breaking, genre-defying, intensely engaging reads of the past year (in our opinion, anyway…and that of the judges…).  Thus, you can only guess how terrific the winners’ books are!

So here is a selection from the categories of winners and nominees for the 2017 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!

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Novel
WINNER: The Hole, by Hye-young Pyun

NOMINEES:

• Ill Will, Dan Chaon
• The Bone Mother, David Demchuk
• The Night Ocean, Paul La Farge
• The Changeling, Victor LaValle

Novella (tie)
WINNER: The Lost Daughter Collective, Lindsey Drager
WINNER: Fever Dream, Samantha Schweblin

NOMINEES:

• Mapping the Interior, Stephen Graham Jones
• The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion, Margaret Killjoy
• The Asylum of Dr. Caligari, James Morrow
• The Murders of Molly Southbourne, Tade Thompson

Single-Author Collection
WINNER: Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado

NOMINEES:

• She Said Destroy, Nadia Bulkin 
• The Doll’s Alphabet, Camilla Grudova
• The Dark Dark, Samantha Hunt 
• Things to Do When You’re Goth in the Country, Chavisa Woods

Edited Anthology
WINNER: Shadows and Tall Trees Volume 7, edited by Michael Kelly (Speak with a Library staff member to access this title)

NOMINEES:

• Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales, edited by Ellen Datlow
• The Djinn Falls in Love, edited by Mahvesh Murad & Jared Shurin
• Looming Low Volume 1, edited by Justin Steele & Sam Cowan (Speak with a Library staff member to access this title)
• Tales From a Talking Board, edited by Ross E. Lockhart (Speak with a Library staff member to access this title)