Shirley — Susan Scarf Merrell

Best known for her short story “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson is an endlessly fascinating figure whose chilling tales of psychological suspense are still widely read and taught around the world. In this darkly captivating novel, Susan Scarf Merrell uses the facts of Jackson's life as a springboard to explore the 1964 disappearance of Paula Weldon, a young Bennington College student. Told through the eyes of Rose Nemser -- the wife of a graduate student working with Jackson's husband, Bennington professor Stanley Edgar Hyman -- Shirley reimagines the connections between the Hymans' volatile marriage and one of the era's great unsolved mysteries.