Folger Book Club
‘A Haunting on the Hill’ by Elizabeth Hand
Our October selection takes a trip to Shirley Jackson’s infamous Hill House, where four theater–makers are attempting to adapt a Jacobean witchcraft play under unique conditions…
Booking and details
RegisterDates Thu, Oct 9, 2025, 6:30pm
Venue Virtual - on Zoom
Tickets Free, Registration required
Duration 6:30pm - 8:00pm (ET)
Our pick for the October book club is A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand.
About the book
From award-winning author Elizabeth Hand comes the first-ever novel authorized to return to the world of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House—an “eerily beautiful, strangely seductive, and genuinely upsetting” (Alix E. Harrow) new story of isolation and longing perfect for our present time.
Open the door . . . .
Holly Sherwin has been a struggling playwright for years, but now, after receiving a grant to develop her play Witching Night, she may finally be close to her big break. All she needs is time and space to bring her vision to life. When she stumbles across Hill House on a weekend getaway upstate, she is immediately taken in by the mansion, nearly hidden outside a remote village. It’s enormous, old, and ever-so eerie—the perfect place to develop and rehearse her play.
Despite her own hesitations, Holly’s girlfriend, Nisa, agrees to join Holly in renting the house for a month, and soon a troupe of actors, each with ghosts of their own, arrive. Yet as they settle in, the house’s peculiarities are made known: strange creatures stalk the grounds, disturbing sounds echo throughout the halls, and time itself seems to shift. All too soon, Holly and her friends find themselves at odds not just with one another, but with the house itself. It seems something has been waiting in Hill House all these years, and it no longer intends to walk alone . . .
Why did we choose this?
The Folger Shakespeare Library’s collection explores not only Shakespeare’s life and works, but also the plays’ historical context, source material, critical and performance histories, and the ways in which they and their time period inspire and are adapted by contemporary novelists.
Continuing Folger Book Club’s tradition of spooky October reads, we kick off this season with the authorized sequel to Shirley Jackson’s classic horror novel The Haunting at Hill House. Focusing on four artists coming together to workshop an adaptation of John Ford, Thomas Dekker, and William Rowley’s The Witch of Edmonton in the “demented” mansion, A Haunting on the Hill connects to several items in the Folger collection and even lets us explore if the Folger Shakespeare Library itself can be considered haunted.
About the Book Club
Our informal Book Club is free and open to all. Our picks range from historical fiction to adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, encompassing a wide variety of genres.
Each session begins with a guest speaker exploring that month’s pick and highlighting items from the Folger collection related to the novel. After the short presentation, participants will be broken into smaller groups for breakout discussions, moderated by a team of staff and volunteers.
Content transparency
A Haunting on the Hill includes potentially sensitive subjects. Expand below for a full list of content (includes spoilers).
- Blood
- Infidelity
- Alcohol
- Drug use
- Child abuse,
- Toxic relationship
- Car accident
- Death
- Sexual assault
Guest speaker
Johnna Champion
Assistant Curator of Collections
Buy the book
Support the Folger Shop with your book purchase.
Fall Folger Book Club selections are now available online and in-person through the Folger Shop!
Click below to purchase your copy of A Haunting on the Hill online or come visit us at 201 East Capitol St SE during our opening hours. Hours and directions
You can also choose to support your favorite local bookstore through Bookshop.org or Libro.fm.
We would like to thank the following organization for its generous support of this program
