Shirley Jackson's The Lottery is a memorable and terrifying masterpiece, fueled by a tension that creeps up on you slowly without any clear indication of why. This is just a townful of people, after all, choosing their numbers for the annual lottery. What's there to be scared of?

In this seemingly ordinary village, a yearly lottery determines a sacrificial victim, revealing the tragic results of following tradition blindly. Jackson masterfully portrays how eeriness lurks beneath the surface of everyday life.