In her celebrated fiction, Shirley Jackson explored the darkness lurking beneath the surface of small-town America. But in Life Among the Savages, she takes on the lighter side of small-town life. In this witty and warm memoir of her family's life in rural Vermont, she delightfully exposes a domestic side in cheerful contrast to her quietly terrifying fiction. With a novelist's gift for character, an unfailing maternal instinct, and her signature...

"Richly emotive and darkly captivating, with elements of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and the imaginative depth of Margaret Atwood, Elsewhere by Alexis Schaitkin conjures a community in which girls become wives, wives become mothers and some of them, quite simply, disappear. Vera grows up in a small town, removed and isolated, pressed up against the mountains, cloud-covered and damp year-round. This town, fiercely protective, brutal and unforgiving...

Do you find yourself feeling emotionally bruised, upset and confused after being in contact with your mother? Are you left doubting yourself - feeling crazy - as she remembers some incidents totally differently to how you remember them, and denies other events even happened at all? Do you somehow feel like you're not a real person in her company? Does it seem that she gets cross, angry or upset when good things happen in your life? And does she seem...