To help protect the health of our staff and customers, our physical store will remain closed for the forseeable future. Our online store is open! We offer priority shipping and curbside pickup. Our phones are open from noon to 4 PM. We appreciate your support as we try to navigate the unique demands of this time.
As COVID-19 cases continue to surge across the country, we have decided to temporarily close our doors for in-store browsing.
During this time, we will offer priority shipping to anywhere in the U.S. as well as curbside pickup in the parking lot behind our store from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week.
Do NOT come to the store until you get a confirmation email that your order is complete and ready for pickup!
Women & Children First is not responsible for lost or stolen packages.
Shirley Jackson's deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family takes readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, macabre humor, and gothic atmosphere. Six years after four family members died suspiciously of arsenic poisoning, the three remaining Blackwoods--elder, agoraphobic sister Constance; wheelchair-bound Uncle Julian; and eighteen-year-old Mary Katherine, or, Merricat--live together in pleasant isolation. Merricat has developed an idiosyncratic system of rules and protective magic to guard the estate against intrusions from hostile villagers. But one day a stranger arrives--cousin Charles, with his eye on the Blackwood fortune--and manages to penetrate into their carefully shielded lives. Unable to drive him away by either polite or occult means, Merricat adopts more desperate methods, resulting in crisis, tragedy, and the revelation of a terrible secret. Jackson's novel emerges less as a study in eccentricity and more--like some of her other fictions--as a powerful critique of the anxious, ruthless processes involved in the maintenance of normalcy itself.
