Search Worlds Without End

Halloween Night, 1954. A young, film-obsessed scriptwriter has just been hired at one of the great studios. An anonymous investigation leads from the giant Maximus Films backlot to an eerie graveyard separated from the studio by a single wall. There he makes a terrifying discovery that thrusts him into a maelstrom of intrigue and mystery -- and into the dizzy exhilaration of the movie industry at the height of its glittering power.

Ray Bradbury is a painter who uses words rather than brushes--for he created lasting visual images that, once observed, are impossible to forget. Sinister mushrooms growing in a dank cellar. A family's first glimpse at Martians. A wonderful white vanilla ice-cream summer suit that changes everyone who wears it. A great artist drawing in the sand on the beach. A clunky contraption made out of household implements to help some kids play a game called Invasion. The most marvelous Christmas display a little boy ever saw.

Table of Contents:

• 9 - In a Season of Calm Weather - (1957) - short story
• 18 - The Dragon - (1955) - short story
• 23 - A Medicine for Melancholy - short story
• 36 - The End of the Beginning - (1956) - short story
• 43 - The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit - non-genre - (1958) - short story
• 71 - Fever Dream - (1948) - short story
• 81 - The Marriage Mender - (1954) - short story
• 88 - The Town Where No One Got Off - (1958) - short story
• 99 - A Scent of Sarsaparilla - (1953) - short story
• 109 - Icarus Montgolfier Wright - (1956) - short story
• 117 - The Headpiece - (1958) - short story
• 128 - Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed - (1949) - short story
• 146 - The Smile - (1952) - short story
• 153 - The First Night of Lent - [The Irish Stories] - (1956) - short story
• 163 - The Time of Going Away - (1956) - short story
• 173 - All Summer in a Day - [All Summer in a Day] - (1954) - short story
• 182 - The Gift - (1952) - short story
• 186 - The Great Collision of Monday Last - [The Irish Stories] - (1958) - short story
• 195 - The Little Mice - (1955) - short story
• 203 - The Shore Line at Sunset - (1959) - short story (variant of The Shoreline at Sunset)
• 216 - The Strawberry Window - (1955) - short story
• 227 - The Day It Rained Forever - (1957) - short story

Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451 is an enduring masterwork of twentieth-century American literature--a chilling vision of a dystopian future built on the foundations of ignorance, censorship, and brutal repression. The origins and evolution of Bradbury's darkly magnificent tale are explored in A Pleasure to Burn, a collection of sixteen selected shorter works that prefigure the grand master's landmark novel. Classic, thematically interrelated stories alongside many crucial lesser-known ones--including, at the collection's heart, the novellas "Long After Midnight" and "The Fireman"--A Pleasure to Burn is an indispensable companion to the most powerful work of America's preeminent storyteller, a wondrous confirmation of the inimitable Bradbury's brilliance, magic... and fire.

Table of Contents:

• The Reincarnate
• Pillar of Fire
• The Library
• Bright Phoenix
• The Mad Wizards of Mars
• Carnival of Madness
• Bonfire
• The Cricket on the Hearth
• The Pedestrian
• The Garbage Collector
• The Smile
• Long After Midnight
• The Fireman
• Dragon
• Sometime Before Dawn
• To the Future

Contents:

• [ii] - Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (frontispiece) - interior artwork by Joseph Mugnaini
• xi - Introduction (Bradbury Stories) - (2003) - essay
• 1 - The Whole Town's Sleeping - [Dandelion Wine] - (1950) - shortstory
• 16 - The Rocket - (1950) - shortstory
• 25 - Season of Disbelief - [Dandelion Wine] - (1950) - shortstory
• 33 - And the Rock Cried Out - (1953) - shortstory
• 54 - The Drummer Boy of Shiloh - (1960) - shortstory
• 59 - The Beggar on O'Connell Bridge - [The Irish Stories] - (1961) - shortstory
• 73 - The Flying Machine - (1953) - shortstory
• 78 - Heavy-Set - (1964) - shortstory
• 86 - The First Night of Lent - [The Irish Stories] - (1956) - shortstory
• 92 - Lafayette, Farewell - (1988) - shortstory
• 100 - Remember Sascha? - (1996) - shortstory
• 107 - Junior - (1988) - shortstory
• 113 - That Woman on the Lawn - (1996) - shortstory
• 125 - February 1999: Ylla - [The Martian Chronicles] - (1950) - shortstory (variant of Ylla)
• 136 - Banshee - [The Irish Stories] - (1984) - shortstory
• 148 - One for His Lordship, and One for the Road! - [The Irish Stories] - (1985) - shortstory
• 156 - The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair - (1987) - shortstory
• 163 - Unterderseaboat Doktor - (1994) - shortstory (variant of Unterseeboot Doktor)
• 174 - Another Fine Mess - (1995) - shortstory
• 182 - The Dwarf - (1954) - shortstory
• 192 - A Wild Night in Galway - (1959) - shortstory
• 197 - The Wind - (1943) - shortstory
• 206 - No News, or What Killed the Dog? - (1994) - shortstory
• 213 - A Little Journey - (1951) - shortstory
• 220 - Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's Is a Friend of Mine - (1966) - novelette
• 243 - The Garbage Collector - (1953) - shortstory
• 248 - The Visitor - (1948) - shortstory
• 260 - The Man - (1949) - shortstory
• 271 - Henry the Ninth - (1969) - shortstory
• 278 - The Messiah - (1973) - shortstory
• 287 - Bang! You're Dead! - [Johnny Choir] - (1944) - shortstory
• 298 - Darling Adolf - (1976) - shortstory
• 312 - The Beautiful Shave - (1979) - shortstory
• 315 - Colonel Stonesteel's Genuine Home-Made Truly Egyptian Mummy - (1981) - shortstory
• 328 - I See You Never - (1947) - shortstory
• 331 - The Exiles - (1949) - shortstory
• 343 - At Midnight, in the Month of June - [Green Town] - (1954) - shortstory
• 352 - The Witch Door - (1995) - shortstory
• 361 - The Watchers - [The Martian Chronicles] - (1945) - shortstory
• 375 - 2004-05: The Naming of Names - [The Martian Chronicles] - (1950) - shortstory (variant of The Naming of Names)
• 376 - Hopscotch - (1996) - shortstory
• 383 - The Illustrated Man - (1950) - shortstory
• 394 - The Dead Man - (1945) - shortstory
• 403 - June 2001: And the Moon Be Still as Bright - [The Martian Chronicles] - (1948) - novelette (variant of And the Moon Be Still as Bright)
• 426 - The Burning Man - (1975) - shortstory
• 432 - G.B.S. - Mark V - (1976) - shortstory
• 442 - A Blade of Grass - (1949) - shortstory
• 449 - The Sound of Summer Running - [Dandelion Wine] - (1956) - shortstory
• 454 - And the Sailor, Home from the Sea - (1960) - shortstory
• 461 - The Lonely Ones - (1949) - shortstory
• 470 - The Finnegan - (1996) - shortstory
• 479 - On the Orient, North - [The Elliott Family] - (1988) - shortstory
• 490 - The Smiling People - (1946) - shortstory
• 498 - The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl - (1948) - shortstory
• 508 - Bug - (1996) - shortstory
• 515 - Downwind from Gettysburg - (1969) - shortstory
• 529 - Time in Thy Flight - (1953) - shortstory
• 533 - Changeling - [Marionettes, Inc.] - (1949) - shortstory
• 539 - The Dragon - (1955) - shortstory
• 542 - Let's Play "Poison" - (1946) - shortstory
• 547 - The Cold Wind and the Warm - [The Irish Stories] - (1964) - shortstory
• 562 - The Meadow - (1953) - shortstory
• 576 - The Kilimanjaro Device - (1965) - shortstory
• 585 - The Man in the Rorschach Shirt - (1966) - shortstory
• 595 - Bless Me, Father, for I Have Sinned - (1984) - shortstory
• 600 - The Pedestrian - (1951) - shortstory
• 604 - Trapdoor - (1985) - shortstory
• 613 - The Swan - [Dandelion Wine] - (1954) - shortstory
• 624 - The Sea Shell - (1944) - shortstory
• 630 - Once More, Legato - (1995) - shortstory
• 639 - June 2003: Way in the Middle of the Air - [The Martian Chronicles] - (1950) - shortstory (variant of Way in the Middle of the Air)
• 651 - The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone - (1954) - shortstory
• 661 - By the Numbers! - (1984) - shortstory (variant of By the Numbers)
• 668 - April 2005: Usher II - [The Martian Chronicles] - (1950) - shortstory (variant of Usher II)
• 682 - The Square Pegs - (1948) - shortstory
• 695 - The Trolley - [Dandelion Wine] - (1955) - shortstory
• 698 - The Smile - (1952) - shortstory
• 703 - The Miracles of Jamie - (1946) - shortstory
• 711 - A Far-Away Guitar - [Green Town] - (1950) - shortstory (variant of Miss Bidwell)
• 720 - The Cistern - (1947) - shortstory
• 726 - The Machineries of Joy - (1962) - shortstory

Ray Bradbury, the undisputed Dean of American storytelling, dips his accomplished pen into the cryptic inkwell of noir and creates a stylish and slightly fantastical tale of mayhem and murder set among the shadows and the murky canals of Venice, California, in the early 1950s.

Toiling away amid the looming palm trees and decaying bungalows, a struggling young writer (who bears a resemblance to the author) spins fantastic stories from his fertile imagination upon his clacking typewriter. Trying not to miss his girlfriend (away studying in Mexico), the nameless writer steadily crafts his literary effort--until strange things begin happening around him.

Starting with a series of peculiar phone calls, the writer then finds clumps of seaweed on his doorstep. But as the incidents escalate, his friends fall victim to a series of mysterious "accidents"--some of them fatal. Aided by Elmo Crumley, a savvy, street-smart detective, and a reclusive actress of yesteryear with an intense hunger for life, the wordsmith sets out to find the connection between the bizarre events, and in doing so, uncovers the truth about his own creative abilities.

The incomparable Ray Bradbury is in the driver's seat, off on twenty-one unforgettable excursions through fantasy, time and memory, and there are surprises waiting around every curve and behind each mile marker. The journey promises to be a memorable one.

Table of Contents:

• Night Train to Babylon - short story
• If MGM Is Killed, Who Gets the Lion? - short story
• Hello, I Must Be Going - short story
• House Divided - short story
• Grand Theft - short story
• Remember Me? - short story
• Fee Fie Foe Fum - (1993) - short story
• Driving Blind - novelette
• I Wonder What's Become of Sally - short story
• Nothing Changes - short story
• That Old Dog Lying in the Dust - (1974) - short story
• Someone in the Rain - short story
• Madame Et Monsieur Shill - short story
• The Mirror - short story
• End of Summer - (1948) - short story
• Thunder in the Morning - short story
• The Highest Branch on the Tree - short story
• A Woman Is a Fast-Moving Picnic - short story
• Virgin Resusitas - short story
• Mr. Pale - short story
• That Bird That Comes Out of the Clock - short story
• A Brief Afterword - essay

Nowadays firemen start fires. Fireman Guy Montag loves to rush to a fire and watch books burn up. Then he met a seventeen-year old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid, and a professor who told him of a future where people could think. And Guy Montag knew what he had to do....

Ray Bradbury, America's most beloved storyteller, has spent a lifetime carrying readers to exhilarating and dangerous places, from dark street comers in unfamiliar cities and towns to the edge of the universe. Now, in an extraordinary flight of the imagination a half-century in the making, he takes us to a most wondrous destination: into the heart of an Eternal Family.

They have lived for centuries in a house of legend and mystery in upper Illinois -- and they are not like other midwesterners. Rarely encountered in daylight hours, their children are curious and wild; their old ones have survived since before the Sphinx first sank its paws deep in Egyptian sands. And some sleep in beds with lids.

Now the house is being readied in anticipation of the gala homecoming that will gather together the farflung branches of this odd and remarkable family. In the past-midnight stillness can be detected the soft fluttering of Uncle Einars wings. From her realm of sleep, Cecy, the fairest and most special daughter, can feel the approach of many a welcome being -- shapeshifter, telepath, somnambulist, vampire -- as she flies high in the consciousness of bird and bat.

But in the midst of eager anticipation, a sense of doom pervades. For the world is changing. And death, no stranger, will always shadow this most singular family: Father, arisen from the Earth; Mother, who never sleeps but dreams; A Thousand Times Great Grandmre; Grandfather, who keeps the wildness of youth between his ears.

And the boy who, more than anyone, carries the burden of time on his shoulders: Timothy, the sad and different foundling son who must share it all, remember, and tell...and who, alone out of all of them, must one day age and wither and die.

By turns lyrical, wistful, poignant, and chilling, From the Dust Returned is the long-awaited new novel by the peerless Ray Bradbury -- a book that will surely be numbered among his most enduring masterworks.

In 1953, the brilliant but terrifying titan of cinema John Huston summons the young writer Ray Bradbury to Ireland. The apprehensive scribe's quest is to capture on paper the fiercest of all literary beasts -- Moby Dick -- in the form of a workable screenplay so the great director can begin filming.

But from the moment he sets foot on Irish soil, the author embarks on an unexpected odyssey. Meet congenial IRA terrorists, tippling men of the cloth impish playwrights, and the boyos at Heeber Finn's pub. In a land where myth is reality, poetry is plentiful, and life's misfortunes are always cause for celebration, Green Shadows, White Whale is the grandest tour of Ireland you'll ever experience -- with the irrepressible Ray Bradbury as your enthusiastic guide.

The mind of Ray Bradbury is a wonder-filled carnival of delight and terror that stretches from the verdant Irish countryside to the coldest reaches of outer space. Yet all his work is united by one common thread: a vivid and profound understanding of the vast set of emotions that bring strength and mythic resonance to our frail species. Ray Bradbury characters may find themselves anywhere and anywhen. A horrified mother may give birth to a strange blue pyramid. A man may take Abraham Lincoln out of the grave--and meet another who puts him back. An amazing Electrical Grandmother may come to live with a grieving family. An old parrot may have learned over long evenings to imitate the voice of Ernest Hemingway, and became the last link to the great man. A priest on Mars may confront his fondest dream: to meet the Messiah. Each of these magnificent creations has something to tell us about our humanity--and all of their fates await you in this new trade edition of twenty-eight classic Bradbury stories and one luscious poem. Travel on an unpredictable and unforgettable literary journey--safe in the hands of one the century's great men of imagination.

Table of Contents:

• The Kilimanjaro Device - (1965)
• The Terrible Conflagration Up at the Place - (1969)
• Tomorrow's Child - (1948)
• The Women - (1948)
• The Inspired Chicken Motel - (1969)
• Downwind from Gettysburg - (1969)
• Yes, We'll Gather at the River - (1969)
• The Cold Wind and the Warm - (1964)
• Night Call, Collect - (1949)
• The Haunting of the New - (1969)
• I Sing the Body Electric! - (1969)
• The Tombling Day - (1952)
• Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's Is a Friend of Mine - (1966)
• Heavy-Set - (1964)
• The Man in the Rorschach Shirt - (1966)
• Henry the Ninth - (1969)
• The Lost City of Mars - (1967)
• Christus Apollo - (1969) - poem

A crazy scheme to bring peace to the world with the aid of rust. A martian who could be Jesus. An author, plucked from his grave, is thwarted by one Melissa Toad, the mysterious witch of New York. This is a collection of tales which demolish the old saying: truth is stranger than fiction.

Table of Contents:

• The Blue Bottle - (1950) - short story
• One Timeless Spring - (1946) - short story
• The Parrot Who Met Papa - (1972) - short story
• The Burning Man - (1975) - short story
• A Piece of Wood - (1952) - short story
• The Messiah - (1973) - short story
• G.B.S. - Mark V - (1976) - short story
• The Utterly Perfect Murder - (1971) - short story
• Punishment Without Crime - (1950) - short story
• Getting Through Sunday Somehow - (1962) - short story
• Drink Entire: Against the Madness of Crowds - (1976) - short story
• Interval in Sunlight - (1954) - novelette
• A Story of Love - (1951) - short story
• The Wish - (1973) - short story
• Forever and the Earth - (1950) - short story
• The Better Part of Wisdom - (1976) - short story by Ray Bradbury
• Darling Adolf - (1976) - short story
• The Miracles of Jamie - (1946) - short story
• The October Game - (1948) - short story
• The Pumpernickel - (1951) - short story
• Long After Midnight - (1963) - short story
• Have I Got a Chocolate Bar for You! - (1973) - short story

This short story originally appeared in the collection Driving Blind (1997). It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 3 (1998), edited by David G. Hartwell.

Two dazzling new novellas from the celebrated author of Fahrenheit 451. Two previously unpublished novellas comprise this astonishing new volume from one of science fiction's greatest living writers.

In the first, 'Somewhere a Band is Playing', newsman James Cardiff is lured through poetry and his fascination with a beautiful and enigmatic young woman to Summerton, Arizona. The small town's childless population hold an extraordinary secret which has been passed on for thousands of years unbeknownst to the rest of human civilization.

In the second novella, 'Leviathan '99', the classic tale of Herman Melville's 'Moby Dick' is reborn as an interstellar adventure. It recounts the exploits of the mad Captain Ahab, who, blinded by his first encounter with a gigantic comet called 'Leviathan', pursues his lunatic vendetta across the universe. Born in space and seeking adventure in the skies, astronaut Ishmael Jones joins the crew aboard the Cetus 7 and quickly finds his fate in the hands of an indefatigable captain.

Published together for the first time in one volume, these two stories twinkle with Bradbury's characteristically intricate metaphors and lyrical phrases. Both are a lasting testament to an older generation of writers that, much like the Leviathan itself, are on the threshold of passing on into the realm of legend.

America has no finer teller of tales than Ray Bradbury. For more than fifty years he has regaled us with wonders, enchanted us with memories, and startled us with simple truths, enabling us to view from fresh perspectives the world we inhabit, and see others we never dreamed existed.

Now the master treats us to another round -- eighteen brand -- new stories and seven previously published but never before collected-proof positive that his magic is as potent as ever. Here is a rich elixir distilled from the pungent fruit of experience and imagination, expertly prepared by a superior mixologist whose hand is sure and whose eyes and ears have long taken in the shouting, weeping, carping, reveling life all around him.

Sip the sweet innocence of youth, and the wisdom and folly -- of age. Taste the warm mysteries of summer and the bitterness of betrayed loves and abandoned places. This glass overflows with a heady brew that will set your mind spinning and carry you to remarkable locales: a house where time has no boundaries; a movie theater where deconstructed schlock is drunkenly reassembled into art; a faraway planet plagued by an epidemic of sorrow; a wheat field that hides a strangely welcome enemy. The comforts of arguments eternal; the addictive terror of a predawn phone call; the ghosts of dear friends, of errant sons and lost fathers, and of lovers both joyously remembered and never-to-be, are but a few of the ingredients that have gone into Bradbury's savory cocktail. And every satisfying swallow brings new surprises and revelations.

One More for the Road is superb refreshment served with wit, heart, and flair by the incomparable Bradbury. This one's on Ray.

Drink up!

Table of Contents:

• First Day - (2002) - shortstory
• Heart Transplant - (1981) - shortstory
• Quid Pro Quo - (2000) - shortstory
• After the Ball - (2002) - novelette
• In Memoriam - (2002) - shortstory
• Tête-à-Tête - (2002) - shortstory
• The Dragon Danced at Midnight - (1966) - shortstory
• The Nineteenth - (2002) - shortstory
• Beasts - (2002) - shortstory
• Autumn Afternoon - (2002) - shortstory
• Where All Is Emptiness There Is Room to Move - (2002) - shortstory
• One-Woman Show - (2002) - shortstory
• The Laurel and Hardy Alpha Centauri Farewell Tour - (2000) - shortstory
• Leftovers - (2002) - shortstory
• One More for the Road - (2002) - shortstory
• Tangerine - (2002) - shortstory y
• With Smiles as Wide as Summer - (1961) - shortstory
• Time Intervening - (1947) - shortstory
• The Enemy in the Wheat - (1994) - shortstory
• Fore! - (2001) - shortstory
• My Son, Max - (1993) - shortstory
• The F. Scott/Tolstoy/Ahab Accumulator - (2002) - shortstory
• Well, What Do You Have to Say for Yourself? - (2002) - shortstory
• Diane de Forêt - (2002) - shortstory
• The Cricket on the Hearth - (2002) - shortstory
• Afterword: Metaphors, the Breakfast of Champions - (2002) - essay by Ray Bradbury

The internationally acclaimed author of The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury is a magician at the height of his powers, displaying his sorcerer's skill with twenty-one remarkable stories that run the gamut from total reality to light fantastic, from high noon to long after midnight. A true master tells all, revealing the strange secret of growing young and mad; opening a Witch Door that links two intolerant centuries; joining an ancient couple in their wild assassination games; celebrating life and dreams in the unique voice that has favored him across six decades and has enchanted millions of readers the world over.

The spellbinding power of RAY BRADBURY

He can make you see things that have never been seen by human eyes.... feel things that no flesh-and-blood creature has ever felt. He can create visions so compelling that they literally seem to dance before your eyes. He can push you back to the beginnings of time and then suddenly, without warning, thrust you forward t the outmost limits of the future. He can make you so much a part of his strange worlds that you literally scream to get out.

Seventeen breathtaking stories by the master of the weird and wonderful, including the space-age classic, FROST AND FIRE.

Table of Contents:

• 5 - Introduction (R Is for Rocket) - (1962) - essay
• 11 - R Is for Rocket - (1943) - short story
• 30 - The End of the Beginning - (1956) - short story
• 36 - The Fog Horn - (1951) - short story
• 46 - The Rocket - (1950) - short story
• 58 - The Rocket Man - (1951) - short story
• 71 - The Golden Apples of the Sun - (1953) - short story
• 79 - A Sound of Thunder - (1952) - short story
• 94 - The Long Rain - (1950) - short story
• 111 - The Exiles - (1949) - short story
• 127 - Here There Be Tygers - (1951) - short story
• 143 - The Strawberry Window - (1955) - short story
• 153 - The Dragon - (1955) - short story
• 157 - The Gift - (1952) - short story
• 160 - Frost and Fire - (1946) - novella
• 209 - Uncle Einar - [The Elliott Family] - (1947) - short story
• 218 - The Time Machine - [Dandelion Wine] - (1955) - short story
• 227 - The Sound of Summer Running - [Dandelion Wine] - (1956) - short story

S is for science fiction, spine-tingling, supernatural and sublime! S is for stories from a "Star Wilderness that stretched as far as eye and mind could see and imagine".

Table of Contents:

• 7 - Introduction (S Is for Space) - (1966) - essay
• 13 - Chrysalis - (1946) - short story
• 39 - Pillar of Fire - (1948) - novelette
• 85 - Zero Hour - (1947) - short story
• 97 - The Man - (1949) - short story
• 113 - Time in Thy Flight - (1953) - short story
• 119 - The Pedestrian - (1951) - short story
• 125 - Hail and Farewell - (1953) - short story
• 135 - Invisible Boy - (1945) - short story
• 147 - Come Into My Cellar - (1962) - short story (variant of Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!)
• 167 - The Million-Year Picnic - [The Martian Chronicles] - (1950) - short story (variant of The Million Year Picnic 1946)
• 179 - The Screaming Woman - [Green Town] - (1951) - short story
• 195 - The Smile - (1952) - short story
• 203 - Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed - (1949) - short story
• 221 - The Trolley - [Dandelion Wine] - (1955) - short story
• 227 - The Flying Machine - (1953) - short story
• 233 - Icarus Montgolfier Wright - (1956) - short story

As in his most recent major fiction collections, One More for the Road (1999) and Driving Blind (1997), Ray Bradbury has once again pulled together a stellar group of stories sure to delight readers of all ages. In The Cat's Pyjamas we are treated to a treasure trove of Bradbury gems old and new -- eerie and strange, nostalgic and bittersweet, searching and speculative -- all but two of which have never been published before. The Cat's Pyjamas is a joyous celebration of the lifelong work of a literary legend.

Contains:

• The Day it Rained Forever
• Fever Dream
• Icarus Montgolfier Wright
• In a Season of Calm Weather
• A Scent of Sasparilla
• The Strawberry Window
• The Town Where Nobody Got Off
• Here There Be Tygers
• The Dragon
• The Gift
• The Smile
• The Marriage Mender
• The Headpiece
• The Time of Going Awat
• The Wonderful Ice-Cream Suit
• The Little Mice
• Dark They Were and Golden Eyed
• The End of the Beginning
• The Rock Cried Out
• Almost the End of the World
• The Sunset Harp
• Perchance to Dream
• The Referent

This short story originally appeared in Esquire, August 1955, and was reprinted in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1956. It can also be found in the collections The Day it Rained Forever (1959), R is for Rocket (1962), Twice Twenty-two (1966), Classic Stories 1: From the Golden Apples of the Sun and R Is for Rocket (1990), and Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (2003).

Ray Bradbury is a modern cultural treasure. His disarming simplicity of style underlies a towering body of work unmatched in metaphorical power by any other American storyteller. And here, presented in a new trade edition, are thirty-two of his most famous tales--prime examples of the poignant and mysterious poetry which Bradbury uniquely uncovers in the depths of the human soul, the otherwordly portraits of outré fascination which spring from the canvas of one of the century's great men of imagination.

From a lonely coastal lighthouse to a sixty-million-year-old safary, from the pouring rain of Venus to the ominous silence of a murder scene, Ray Bradbury is our sure-handed guide not only to surprising and outrageous manifestations of the future, but also to the wonders of the present that we could never have imagined on our own.

Table of Contents:

• The Fog Horn - (1951)
• The Pedestrian - (1951)
• The April Witch - (1952)
• The Wilderness - (1952)
• The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl - (1948)
• Invisible Boy - (1945)
• The Flying Machine - (1953)
• The Murderer - (1953)
• The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind - (1953)
• I See You Never - (1947)
• Embroidery - (1951)
• The Big Black and White Game - (1945)
• A Sound of Thunder - (1952)
• The Great Wide World Over There - (1952)
• Powerhouse - (1948)
• En la Noche - (1952)
• Sun and Shadow - (1953)
• The Meadow - (1953)
• The Garbage Collector - (1953)
• The Great Fire - (1949)
• Hail and Farewell - (1953)
• The Golden Apples of the Sun - (1953)

On Halloween night, eight trick-or-treaters gather at the haunted house by the edge of town, ready for adventure. But when Something whisks their friend Pip away, only one man, the sinister Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud, can help the boys find him.

He was a riot of rockets and fountains and people, in such intricate detail and color that you could hear the voiced murmuring, small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body.

Ray Bradbury brings wonders alive. A peerless American storyteller, his oeuvre has been celebrated for decades--from The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 to Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes.

The Illustrated Man is classic Bradbury --a collection of tales that breathe and move, animated by sharp, intaken breath and flexing muscle. Here are eighteen startling visions of humankind's destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin--visions as keen as the tattooist's needle and as colorful as the inks that indelibly stain the body.

The images, ideas, sounds and scents that abound in this phantasmagoric sideshow are provocative and powerful: the mournful cries of celestial travelers cast out cruelly into a vast, empty space of stars and blackness ... the sight of gray dust settling over a forgotten outpost on a road that leads nowhere ... the pungent odor of Jupiter on a returning father's clothing. Here living cities take their vengeance, technology awakens the most primal natural instincts, Martian invasions are foiled by the good life and the glad hand, and dreams are carried aloft in junkyard rockets.

Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man is a kaleidoscopic blending of magic, imagination, and truth, widely believed to be one of the Grandmaster's premier accomplishments: as exhilarating as interplanetary travel, as maddening as a walk in a million-year rain, and as comforting as simple, familiar rituals on the last night of the world.

Contains:

• A Flight of Ravens
• A Miracle of Rare Device
• And So Died Riabouchinska
• And the Sailor, Home from the Sea
• Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!
• Death and the Maiden
• El Dia de Muerte
• Perhaps We Are Going Away
• Some Live Like Lazarus
• The Anthem Sprinters
• The Beggar of O'Connell Bridge
• The Best of All Possible Worlds
• The Drummer Boy of Shiloh
• The Illustrated Woman
• The Life Work of Juan Diaz
• The Machineries of Joy
• The One Who Waits
• The Vacation
• To The Chicago Abyss
• Tyrannosaurus Rex

Leaving behind a world on the brink of destruction, man came to the Red planet and found the Martians waiting, dreamlike. Seeking the promise of a new beginning, man brought with him his oldest fears and his deepest desires. Man conquered Mars?and in that instant, Mars conquered him. The strange new world with its ancient, dying race and vast, red-gold deserts cast a spell on him, settled into his dreams, and changed him forever. Here are the captivating chronicles of man and Mars?the modern classic by the peerless Ray Bradbury.

Welcome to a land Ray Bradbury calls "the Undiscovered Country" of his imagination--that vast territory of ideas, concepts, notions and conceits where the stories you now hold were born. America's premier living author of short fiction, Bradbury has spent many lifetimes in this remarkable place--strolling through empty, shadow-washed fields at midnight; exploring long-forgotten rooms gathering dust behind doors bolted years ago to keep strangers locked out.. and secrets locked in. The nights are longer in this country. The cold hours of darkness move like autumn mists deeper and deeper toward winter. But the moonlight reveals great magic here--and a breathtaking vista.

The October Country is many places: a picturesque Mexican village where death is a tourist attraction; a city beneath the city where drowned lovers are silently reunited; a carnival midway where a tiny man's most cherished fantasy can be fulfilled night after night. The October Country's inhabitants live, dream, work, die--and sometimes live again--discovering, often too late, the high price of citizenship. Here a glass jar can hold memories and nightmares; a woman's newborn child can plot murder; and a man's skeleton can war against him. Here there is no escaping the dark stranger who lives upstairs...or the reaper who wields the world. Each of these stories is a wonder, imagined by an acclaimed tale-teller writing from a place shadows. But there is astonishing beauty in these shadows, born from a prose that enchants and enthralls. Ray Bradbury's The October Country is a land of metaphors that can chill like a long-after-midnight wind...as they lift the reader high above a sleeping Earth on the strange wings of Uncle Einar.

Table of Contents:

• The Crowd - (1943) - short story
• The Emissary - (1947) - short story
• Jack-in-the-Box - (1947) - short story
• The Jar - (1944) - short story
• The Lake - (1944) - short story
• The Man Upstairs - (1947) - short story
• The Scythe - (1943) - short story
• Skeleton - (1945) - short story
• The Small Assassin - (1946) - short story
• There Was an Old Woman - (1944) - short story
• Uncle Einar - [The Elliott Family] - (1947) - short story
• The Dwarf - (1954) - short story
• The Next in Line - (1947) - novelette
• The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse - (1954) - short story
• The Wind - (1943) - short story
• The Cistern - (1947) - short story
• Homecoming - [The Elliott Family] - (1947) - short story (variant of The Homecoming 1946)
• The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone - (1954) - short story
• Touched with Fire - (1954) - short story

Table of Contents:

• 7 - The Small Assassin - (1946) - short story
• 26 - The Next in Line - (1947) - novelette
• 63 - The Lake - (1944) - short story
• 70 - The Crowd - (1943) - short story
• 80 - Jack-in-the-Box - (1947) - short story
• 98 - The Man Upstairs - (1947) - short story
• 111 - The Cistern - (1947) - short story
• 119 - The Tombstone - (1945) - short story
• 126 - The Smiling People - (1946) - short story
• 137 - The Handler - (1947) - short story
• 148 - Let's Play "Poison" - (1946) - short story
• 154 - The Night - [Dandelion Wine] - (1946) - short story
• 163 - The Dead Man - (1945) - short story

An extensive collection of imaginative short stories by a National Medal of the Arts-winning author of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and suspense.

Fly to Mars and explore the mysteries of the red planet. Journey through time to futures ruled by cold computers and hear the deafening roar of dinosaurs in the past. Sing the body electric and look into the mechanical eyes of androids that want to replace human life as we know it. Visit idyllic landscapes and nostalgic towns that hide sinister secrets. Available in one massive collection for the first time digitally, experience the wondrous mind of Ray Bradbury through one hundred of his all-time greatest tales. These are the stories that ask "What if?," the stories that make the mind turn, and those that are, in the true spirit of Ray Bradbury, best read under the safety of a blanket.

Featuring works from Dark Carnival (1947), The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953), Fahrenheit 451 (1953), The October Country (1955), Dandelion Wine (1957), A Medicine for Melancholy (1959), R Is for Rocket (1962), The Machineries of Joy (1964), S Is for Space (1966), I Sing the Body Electric! (1969), and Long After Midnight (1976)--as well as six additional stories available only in this collection--this is the best of Bradbury over numerous decades, thoughtfully compiled from the seminal short story collections that marked his illustrious career.

Table of Contents:

• Drunk, and in Charge of a Bicycle - (1980) - essay by Ray Bradbury
• The Night - [Dandelion Wine] - (1946) - short story
• Homecoming - [The Elliott Family] - (1946) - short story (variant of The Homecoming)
• Uncle Einar - [The Elliott Family] - (1947) - short story
• The Traveler - [The Elliott Family] - (1946) - short story (variant of The Traveller)
• The Lake - (1944) - short story
• The Coffin - (1947) - short story
• The Crowd - (1943) - short story
• The Scythe - (1943) - short story
• There Was an Old Woman - (1944) - short story
• There Will Come Soft Rains - [The Martian Chronicles] - (1950) - short story
• Mars Is Heaven - [The Martian Chronicles] - (1948) - short story (variant of Mars Is Heaven!)
• The Silent Towns - [The Martian Chronicles] - (1949) - short story
• The Earth Men - [The Martian Chronicles] - (1948) - short story
• The Off Season - [The Martian Chronicles] - (1948) - short story
• The Million-Year Picnic - [The Martian Chronicles] - (1946) - short story (variant of The Million Year Picnic)
• The Fox and the Forest - (1950) - short story
• Kaleidoscope - (1949) - short story
• The Rocket Man - (1951) - short story
• Marionettes, Inc. - [Marionettes, Inc.] - (1949) - short story
• No Particular Night or Morning - (1951) - short story
• The City - (1950) - short story
• The Fire Balloons - [The Martian Chronicles] - (1951) - short story
• The Last Night of the World - (1951) - short story
• The Veldt - (1950) - short story
• The Long Rain - (1950) - short story
• The Great Fire - [Green Town] - (1949) - short story
• The Wilderness - [The Martian Chronicles] - (1952) - short story
• A Sound of Thunder - (1952) - short story
• The Murderer - (1953) - short story
• The April Witch - [The Elliott Family] - (1952) - short story
• Invisible Boy - (1945) - short story
• The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind - (1953) - short story
• The Fog Horn - (1951) - short story
• The Big Black and White Game - (1945) - short story
• Embroidery - (1951) - short story
• The Golden Apples of the Sun - (1953) - short story
• Powerhouse - (1948) - short story
• Hail and Farewell - (1953) - short story
• The Great Wide World Over There - (1952) - short story
• The Playground - (1952) - short story
• Skeleton - (1945) - short story
• The Man Upstairs - (1947) - short story
• Touched with Fire - (1954) - short story
• The Emissary - (1947) - short story
• The Jar - (1944) - short story
• The Small Assassin - (1946) - short story
• The Next in Line - (1947) - novelette
• Jack-in-the-Box - (1947) - short story
• The Leave-Taking - [Dandelion Wine] - (1957) - short story
• Exorcism - [Dandelion Wine] - (1957) - short story
• The Happiness Machine - [Dandelion Wine] - (1957) - short story
• Calling Mexico - [Dandelion Wine] - (1950) - short story
• The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit - non-genre - (1958) - short story
• Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed - (1949) - short story
• The Strawberry Window - (1955) - short story
• A Scent of Sarsaparilla - (1953) - short story
• The Picasso Summer - (1957) - short story (variant of In a Season of Calm Weather)
• The Day It Rained Forever - (1957) - short story
• A Medicine for Melancholy - (1959) - short story
• The Shoreline at Sunset - (1959) - short story
• Fever Dream - (1948) - short story
• The Town Where No One Got Off - (1958) - short story
• All Summer in a Day - (1954) - short story
• Frost and Fire - (1946) - novella
• The Anthem Sprinters - non-genre - [The Irish Stories] - (1963) - short story
• And So Died Riabouchinska - (1953) - short story
• Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar! - (1962) - short story
• The Vacation - (1963) - short story
• The Illustrated Woman - (1961) - short story
• Some Live Like Lazarus - (1960) - short story
• The Best of All Possible Worlds - (1960) - short story
• The One Who Waits - (1949) - short story
• Tyrannosaurus Rex - (1962) - short story
• The Screaming Woman - [Green Town] - (1951) - short story
• The Terrible Conflagration Up at the Place - [The Irish Stories] - (1969) - short story
• Night Call, Collect - (1949) - short story
• The Tombling Day - (1952) - short story
• The Haunting of the New - [The Irish Stories] - (1969) - short story
• Tomorrow's Child - (1948) - short story
• I Sing the Body Electric! - (1969) - novelette
• The Women - (1948) - short story
• The Inspired Chicken Motel - (1969) - short story
• Yes, We'll Gather at the River - (1969) - short story
• Have I Got a Chocolate Bar for You! - (1973) - short story
• A Story of Love - [Green Town] - (1976) - short story (variant of These Things Happen 1951)
• The Parrot Who Met Papa - (1972) - short story
• The October Game - (1948) - short story
• Punishment Without Crime - [Marionettes, Inc.] - (1950) - short story
• A Piece of Wood - (1952) - short story
• The Blue Bottle - (1950) - short story
• Long After Midnight - (1963) - short story
• The Utterly Perfect Murder - (1971) - short story
• The Better Part of Wisdom - (1976) - short story
• Interval in Sunlight - (1954) - novelette
• The Black Ferris - (1948) - short story
• Farewell Summer - [Green Town] - (1980) - short story
• McGillahee's Brat - [The Irish Stories] - (1970) - short story
• The Aqueduct - (1979) - short story
• Gotcha! - (1978) - short story
• The End of the Beginning - (1956) - short story

Contents:

• The Toynbee Convector
• Trapdoor
• On the Orient, North [The Elliott Family]
• One Night in Your Life
• West of October [The Elliott Family]
• The Last Circus
• The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair
• I Suppose You Are Wondering Why We Are Here?
• Lafayette, Farewell
• Banshee [The Irish Stories]
• Promises, Promises
• The Love Affair
• One for His Lordship, and One for the Road!
• At Midnight, in the Month of June [Green Town]
• Me, Father, for I Have Sinned
• By the Numbers!
• A Touch of Petulance
• Long Division
• Come, and Bring Constance!
• Junior
• The Tombstone
• The Thing at the Top of the Stairs
• Colonel Stonesteel's Genuine Home-Made Truly Egyptian Mummy

Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow

Strange, haunting, bizarre, grotesque... stories to set you shivering, gasping with terror, gaping with wonder... timeless stories selected by RAY BRADBURY

Each - in the remarkable Bradbury tradition - a vivid and unforgettable adventure into the unknown, written by one of the master storytellers of our time... Roald Dahl, Christopher Isherwood, John Steinbeck, Shirley Jackson, John Cheever, E.B. White, Hortense Calisher, Franz Kafka, Ludwig Bemelmans, Raby Bradbury, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, and 15 others!

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1952) - essay by Ray Bradbury
• The Hour After Westerly - (1947) - shortstory by Robert M. Coates
• Housing Problem - (1944) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Henry Kuttner ]
• The Portable Phonograph - (1941) - shortstory by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
• None Before Me - (1949) - shortstory by Sidney Carroll
• Putzi - (1935) - shortstory by Ludwig Bemelmans
• The Daemon Lover - (1949) - shortstory by Shirley Jackson
• Miss Winters and the Wind - (1946) - shortstory by Christine Noble Govan
• Mr. Death and the Redheaded Woman - (1950) - shortstory by Helen Eustis
• Jeremy In the Wind - (1949) - shortstory by Nigel Kneale
• The Glass Eye - (1944) - shortstory by John Keir Cross
• Saint Katy the Virgin - (1938) - shortstory by John Steinbeck
• Night Flight - (1944) - shortstory by Josephine W. Johnson
• The Cocoon - (1946) - shortstory by John B. L. Goodwin
• The Hand - (1947) - shortstory by Wessel Hyatt Smitter
• The Sound Machine - (1949) - shortstory by Roald Dahl
• The Laocoön Complex - (1937) - shortstory by J. C. Furnas
• I Am Waiting - (1939) - shortstory by Christopher Isherwood
• The Witnesses - (1944) - shortstory by William Sansom
• The Enormous Radio - (1947) - shortstory by John Cheever
• Heartburn - (1951) - shortstory by Hortense Calisher
• The Supremacy of Uruguay - (1933) - shortstory by E. B. White
• The Pedestrian - (1951) - shortstory by Ray Bradbury
• A Note for the Milkman - (1950) - shortstory by Sidney Carroll
• The Eight Mistresses - (1937) - shortstory by Jean Hrolda
• In the Penal Colony - (1948) - novelette by Franz Kafka
• Inflexible Logic - (1940) - shortstory by Russell Maloney

Fahrenheit 451. The Martian Chronicles. The Illustrated Man. Dandelion Wine. Something Wicked This Way Comes... these are just a few of the vast collection of master works by Ray Bradbury, one of the best-known and most beloved of American writers. We'll Always Have Paris, his new collection of stories gathered together for the first time, is a treasure trove of Bradbury gems--eerie and strange, nostalgic and bittersweet, searching and speculative... and a joyous celebration of the lifelong work of a literary legend.

Table of Contents:

• xi - Introduction: Watching and Writing - (2009) - essay
• 1 - Massinello Pietro - (2009) - short story
• 15 - The Visit - (2009) - short story
• 23 - The Twilight Greens - (2009) - short story
• 31 - The Murder - (2009) - short story
• 41 - When the Bough Breaks - (2009) - short story
• 47 - We'll Always Have Paris - (2009) - short story
• 55 - Ma Perkins Comes to Stay - (2009) - novelette
• 77 - Doubles - (2009) - short story
• 81 - Pater Caninus - (2009) - short story
• 89 - Arrivals and Departures - (2009) - short story
• 103 - Last Laughs - (2009) - short story
• 119 - Pietà Summer - (2009) - short story
• 121 - Fly Away Home - (2009) - short story
• 135 - Un-pillow Talk - (2009) - short story
• 143 - Come Away With Me - (2009) - short story
• 157 - Apple-Core Baltimore - (2009) - short story
• 163 - The Reincarnate - (2005) - short story
• 179 - Remembrance, Ohio - (2009) - short story
• 189 - If Paths Must Cross Again - (2009) - short story
• 195 - Miss Appletree and I - (2009) - short story
• 201 - A Literary Encounter - (2009) - short story
• 205 - America - (1964) - poem

A spaceship captain determined to gather a cupful of the sun... a nubile young witch who yearns to taste human love... an expedition that hunts dinosaurs across the fragile and dangerous chasm of time... These strange and wonderful tales of beauty and terror will transport you from the begininng of time to the outermost limits of the future. Selected from his best-selling collections The Golden Apples Of The Sun and R Is For Rocket, here are thirty-two superb stories from one of the master fantastics of our age--the inimitable Ray Bradbury.

Classic Stories 2: From A Medicine for Melancholy and S Is for Space is a semi-omnibus edition of two short story collections by Ray Bradbury, A Medicine for Melancholy and S is for Space. Stories from the original collections that are included in Classic Stories 1 are omitted.

In 1998, Avon Books reprinted this collection as A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories.

Ray Bradbury's moving recollection of a vanished golden era remains one of his most enchanting novels. Dandelion Wine stands out in the Bradbury literary canon as the author's most deeply personal work, a semi-autobiographical recollection of a magical small-town summer in 1928.

Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green Town, Illinois, is as vast and deep as the whole wide world that lies beyond the city limits. It is a pair of brand-new tennis shoes, the first harvest of dandelions for Grandfather's renowned intoxicant, the distant clang of the trolley's bell on a hazy afternoon. It is yesteryear and tomorrow blended into an unforgettable always. But as young Douglas is about to discover, summer can be more than the repetition of established rituals whose mystical power holds time at bay. It can be a best friend moving away, a human time machine who can transport you back to the Civil War, or a sideshow automaton able to glimpse the bittersweet future.

Come and savor Ray Bradbury's priceless distillation of all that is eternal about boyhood and summer.

In the deceiving warmth of earliest October, civil war has come to Green Town, Illinois, an age-old conflict pitting the young against the elderly for control of the clock that ticks their lives ever forward. The graying forces of school board despot Mr. Calvin C. Quartermain have declared total war on thirteen-year-old Douglas Spaulding and his downy-cheeked cohorts. The boys, in turn, plan and execute daring campaigns, matching old Quartermain's experience and cunning with their youthful enthusiasm and devil-may-care determination to hold on forever to childhood's summer. Yet time must ultimately be the victor, as life waits in ambush to assail young Spaulding with its powerful mysteries—the irresistible ascent of manhood, the sweet surrender of a first kiss . . .

For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry: step inside - the show is about to begin...

It's the week before Hallowe'en, and Cooger and Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois. The siren song of the calliope entices all with promises of youth regained and dreams fulfilled, but everyone touched will be destroyed, for Mr Dark collects souls. And as two boys trembling on the brink of manhood set out to explore the mysteries of the dark carnival's smoke, mazes and mirrors, they will also discover the true price of innermost wishes . . .

Green Town, Illinois stands at the very heart of Ray Bradbury Country. A lovingly re-imagined version of the author's native Waukegan, it has served as the setting for such modern classics as Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Farewell Summer. In Summer Morning, Summer Night, Bradbury returns to this signature locale with a generous new collection of twenty-seven stories and vignettes, seventeen of which have never been published before. Together, they illuminate some of Green Town's previously hidden corners, and reaffirm Bradbury's position as the undisputed master of a unique fictional universe.

Table of Contents:

• End of Summer - (1948)
• The Great Fire - (1949)
• All on a Summer's Night - (1950)
• Miss Bidwell - (1950)
• The Pumpernickel - (1951)
• These Things Happen - (1951)
• At Midnight, in the Month of June - (1954)
• A Walk in Summer - (1979)
• Autumn Afternoon - (2002)
• Arrival and Departure
• The Beautiful Lady
• Love Potion
• Night Meeting
• The Death of So-and-So
• I Got Something You Ain't Got!
• The Waders
• The Dog
• The River That Went Out to Sea
• Over, Over, Over, Over, Over, Over, Over, Over!
• The Projector
• The People With Seven Arms
• A Serious Discussion (or Evil in the World)
• The Fireflies
• The Circus
• The Cemetery (or the Tombyard)
• Summer's End
• The Screaming Woman - (1951)