Now and Forever (15 page)

Turn the page to discover more classic masterworks from Ray Bradbury, “an author whose fanciful imagination, poetic prose, and mature understanding of human character have won him an international reputation.”

—New York Times

 

Novels

 

Dandelion Wine

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. The author's most deeply personal work,
Dandelion Wine
is a semi-autobiographical recollection of a magical small town summer in 1928—a priceless distillation of all that is eternal about boyhood and summer.

 

“[A] beautiful paean to growing up in the Midwest.”

—
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

 

 

Farewell Summer

Thirteen-year-old Douglas Spaulding, his younger brother Tom, and their friends do their best to take advantage of the last days of summer—rampaging through the ravine, tormenting girls … and declaring war on the old men who run Green Town, Illinois. For the boys know that Mr. Calvin C. Quartermain and his cohorts want nothing more than to force the boys to grow up. More than fifty years in the making, this eagerly anticipated sequel to
Dandelion Wine
is vintage Bradbury—beautiful, poignant, wistful, hilarious, sad, evocative, profound, and wholly unforgettable.

 

“Bradbury returns to his first love, the magic of childhood … The long-awaited, rewarding conclusion to an American classic.”

—Rocky Mountain News

 

 

The Martian Chronicles

Mars is a place of hope, dreams and metaphor—of crystal pillars and fossil seas—where a fine dust settles on the great, empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. It is here the invaders have come to despoil and commercialize, to grow and to learn, to escape a world with no future or promise of tomorrow. The Earthman conquers Mars … and then is conquered
by
it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race.

In his groundbreaking, provocatively imagined chronicle of Earth's settlement of the fourth world from the sun, Bradbury stunningly exposes our strength, weakness, folly, and poignant humanity in a strange and breathtaking world where humanity does not belong.

 

“Thank the shades of Twain and Melville and the living presence of Pynchon … that this Poet Laureate of the Chimerical and Phantasmagoric is still with us, still writing, still freshening our ration of dream dust.”

—
Los Angeles Times

 

 

From the Dust Returned

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 for the gala homecoming that will gather together the far-flung branches of this odd and remarkable family. 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, 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.

 

“Filled with poetic imagery, paeans to yesterday and lost faith, and plenty of magic storytelling,
From the Dust Returned
is ample proof that 81-year-old Bradbury hasn't lost the passion and fire of his youth. Like the members of his [Elliot] Family, Bradbury's talents are immortal.”

—
Denver Post

 

 

Something Wicked This Way Comes

The carnival rolls in sometime after the midnight hour of a chilly mid-western October eve. Young boyhood companions James Nightshade and Will Halloway are the first to heed its call. From a place of safety, they watch a midway come to spectral life, their emotions a riot of eagerness, trepidation, bravado, and uncertainty. For they can sense the change that's in the air; that this is the Autumn in which innocence must vanish in the harsh, acrid smoke of disillusionment … and horror.

In this season of dying, Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. And two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes … and the stuff of nightmare.

 

“Ray Bradbury is an old-fashioned romantic who's capable of imagining a dystopic future. He can evoke nostalgia for a mythic, golden past or raise goosebumps with tales of horror.”

—
Chicago Tribune

 

 

A Graveyard for Lunatics

Halloween night, 1954. A young, film-obsessed scriptwriter has just been hired at one of the great studios. An anonymous invitation leads him 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.

Here are monocled directors, ham-handed studio heads, obsessive actors, fanatical devotees, and one glorious special effects genius—all part of the tarnished golden age of Tinseltown, all remembered with unmatched brilliance by the masterful Ray Bradbury.

 

“For anyone who grew up on Bradbury's stories, this … is like camping out with Santa Claus … Bradbury has convincingly conjured a lost world, ‘lovelier than tonight or all the nights to come.'”

—
Newsweek