The Lottery and Other Stories
By Shirley Jackson, 1949

Certainly haunting. Mostly still relevant. Illuminates the gossip and crazy people that live in small towns and the inhuman interactions and pace of city life.

It’s a book of 26 short stories, the last of which is “The Lottery” and fairly famous. I read “The Lottery” in a short story class in high school. A lot of the stories ended in a frustrating manner, but Shirley Jackson probably meant for that to happen. She didn’t seem too concerned with happy endings or pleasing the reader.