Now and Forever (16 page)

Death Is a Lonely Business

Toiling away amid the looming palm trees and decaying bungalows, a struggling young writer 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.

From peculiar phone calls to odd clumps of seaweed on the doorstep, the mysterious incidents continue to escalate around the writer until his friends fall victim to a series of mysterious “accidents.” 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 protagonist is Bradbury himself, as a young writer and amateur sleuth … His pursuit of the killer stalking the neighborhood's old eccentrics obsessed with the past opens up their private world … This rampant nostalgia also applies to the author, who bestows on his younger self the ideas and insights that would grow into his classic stories.”

—
Publishers Weekly

 

 

Let's All Kill Constance

On a dismal evening in the previous century, an unnamed writer in Venice, California, answers a furious pounding at his beachfront bungalow door and again admits Constance Rattigan into his life. An aging, once-glamorous Hollywood star, Constance is running in fear from something she dares not acknowledge—and vanishes as suddenly as she appeared, leaving the narrator two macabre books: twin listings of the Tinseltown dead and soon to be dead, with Constance's name included among them.

And so begins an odyssey as dark as it is wondrous, as the writer sets off in a broken-down jalopy with his irascible sidekick Crumley to sift through the ashes of a bygone Hollywood—a graveyard of ghosts and secrets where each twisted road leads to grim shrines and shattered dreams … and, all too often, to death.

 

“Ray Bradbury's writing remains as rich and ripe as ever.”

—
Washington Post Times-Herald

 

 

Green Shadows, White Whale

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.

 

“A must for anyone enamored of the Celtic twilight in all its fanciful disguises.”

—
Atlanta Journal Constitution

Short Fiction

 

Bradbury Stories

In this landmark volume, America's preeminent storyteller offers us one hundred treasures from a lifetime of words and ideas. The stories within these pages were chosen by Bradbury himself, and span a career that blossomed in the pulp magazines of the early 1940s and continues to flourish in the new millennium. Here are representatives of the legendary author's finest works of short fiction, including many that have not been republished for decades, all forever fresh and vital, evocative and immensely entertaining.

 

“[A]ny Bradbury at all is supremely well worth a weekend's reading.”

—
Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

 

 

The Cat's Pajamas

Ray Bradbury has once again pulled together a stellar group of stories sure to delight readers of all ages. In
The Cat's Pajamas
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 Pajamas
is a joyous celebration of the lifelong work of a literary legend.

 

“Some writers have a presence so pervasive that we take them wholly for granted; they're the floor we walk on. For almost 70 years now, ceaselessly, untiringly, Bradbury has toiled in his garden.... Ray Bradbury has accomplished what very few artists do. With his visions of possible futures and edgy presents, he has shown us a way out of the trap of our selves, shown us how we can break the momentum of the past, of our habits and willful ignorance. He has not only transformed science fiction, he has changed us.”

—
Boston Sunday Globe

 

 

One More for the Road

Here is a rich elixir distilled from the pungent fruit of experience and imagination, expertly prepared by a superior mixologist. 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.

 

“Sci-fi fans and 35-year-old virgins alike revere Bradbury as one of the genre's last living masters … his collection of 25 new short stories ranks up there with classics such as
Fahrenheit 451
… Bradbury is still boldly going where few writers have gone before.”

—
Maxim

 

 

Driving Blind

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.

 

“A must … Bradbury returns in top form.”

—
Library Journal

 

 

Quicker Than the Eye

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.

 

“Whimsical, fantastic and sometimes terrifying.”

—
Kansas City Star

 

 

A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories

With his disarmingly simple style and complex imagination, Ray Bradbury has seized the minds of American readers for decades. This collection showcases thirty-two of Bradbury's most famous tales in which he lays bare the depths of the human soul. The thrilling title story,
A Sound of Thunder,
tells of a hunter sent on safari—sixty million years in the past. But all it takes is one wrong step in the prehistoric jungle to stamp out the life of a delicate and harmless butterfly—and possibly something else much closer to home …

 

“A powerful writing talent.”

—
Fort Worth Star-Telegram

 

 

A Medicine for Melancholy

Ray Bradbury is a painter who uses words rather than brushes—for he creates 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. All those images and many more are inside this book—timeless short fiction that ranges from the farthest reaches of space to the innermost stirrings of the heart.

 

“Bradbury has a style all his own, much imitated but never matched … After writing for more than fifty years, Bradbury has become more than pretty good at it. He has become a master.”

—
Oregonian
(Portland)