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Today’s newsletter continues my review of Shirley Jackson’s less-known novels.

The non-fiction story of Sybil came to mind while I was reading this one. That book and the movie it inspired created a sensation during the mid-1970s and established Sally Field as a great actress. But The Bird's Nest predates Sybil by two decades. It's a fascinating tale and one of the first one to deal with multiple personalities.

Elizabeth Richmond is a colorless, repressed young woman with a meaningless clerical...

Today’s newsletter continues my review of Shirley Jackson’s less-known novels.

Sometimes I wish there was a list of books titled “Read These Before You Die.” They would be books I’d never heard of before, but which spoke directly to my heart. Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman, published in 1951, is one of them.

Though lacking the high profile of The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, the desperate emotional journey of Natalie Waite is equally engrossing. She...

Shirley Jackson is famous for her singular use of fiction to comment on the human condition. Her most famous works are The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

Over the next four weeks I will review her less prominent novels. Today I begin with the 1948 book that launched her career.

Pepper Street is an ordinary place with ordinary people—ordinary in the sense that its residents are far from perfect. A superficial harmony lies over the neighborhood. Author...

I don’t know what I’d do without book ads to help me find new treasures. I had never heard of John Ehle until I saw a BookBub blurb about The Land Breakers, which was published in 1964. If you’re not familiar with Ehle, you should check him out. His deep respect for nature and rustic life shines on every page of this captivating novel.

In 1779 Mooney Wright and his new bride arrive in the North Carolina mountains. Determined to build a cabin and live off the land, they work hard to prepare for...

It’s not every day that a typewriter is the hero of a novel. But for a writer with a good imagination, anything is possible. Author Allie Millington puts hers to work with great skill in Olivetti.

The typewriter belongs to Beatrice Brindle, who has used it to record her feelings after a bout with cancer. But her husband Felix and their four children retain scars from the trauma. One of the boys, Ernest, has withdrawn into himself to the point that he rarely speaks. Felix hides in his career...

Did you know that George Washington considered Daniel Boone a bandit? That during World War II the Japanese occupied part of Alaska? Or that Hawaii lived under martial law for three years? Have you ever heard of the National Screw Thread Commission? All these facts are part of Daniel Immerwahr’s fascinating history of American colonialism.

In How to Hide an Empire, the author recounts the circumstances which led Europeans to conquer not only the land they own today, but many territories beyond...

Today it’s my privilege to feature author B.D. Lawrence. He’s a member of Brave Authors, a collaboration of Christian fiction writers.

B.D. is best known for his crime and detective novels. But recently he and two other Brave Authors have produced Every Captive Freed, a collection of three novellas about human trafficking. His novella Sarah's Story features a girl rescued from the brutality of street life. In an effort at redemption, she reaches out to others caught in the same trap.

Streams of...

Something terrible has happened on the declining estate where two elderly sisters live. Beyond the stone wall surrounding it lies something so terrible that Evelyn and Lily won’t even look in that direction.

More disturbing things are happening. The food seeds and flowers they plant are blooming late. The seasons aren’t right. Something’s wrong with the weather. The sisters live and sleep in the kitchen because most of the house is boarded up to protect them from “man things.”

And now, someone...