Ray Bradbury – The October Country

Ray Bradbury – The October Country (Four Square, 1963, 1964, 1965)

The Dwarf
The watchful Poker Chip of H.Matisse
Skeleton
The Jar
The Traveller
The Emissary
Touched with Fire
The Scythe
Uncle Einar
The Wind
There was an Old Woman
Homecoming
The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone.

Blurb:
When Charlie brought home the Thing in the jar, he knew that its mystery would draw the neighbours to his lonely house — knew that it would arouse his wife’s jealousy. He was right, but he didn’t know what form his wife’s jealousy would take — nor what he would have to do to silence her for ever.
Ray Bradbury is a master of the macabre, and each of his stories is imbued with the sort of quiet horror which makes the skin clammy with apprehension. He writes about the dark corners of life — what exists on the other side of normality … the dwarf who took comfort from a distorting mirror . . . the man with the painted eye … the bone doctor with a taste for human marrow… strange … weird … flush with fantasy.

Ray Bradbury – The October Country

Ray Bradbury – The October Country (New English Library, 1973)

The Dwarf
The watchful Poker Chip of H.Matisse
Skeleton
The Jar
The Traveller
The Emissary
Touched with Fire
The Scythe
Uncle Einar
The Wind
There was an Old Woman
Homecoming
The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone.

Companion volume to The Small Assassin which between them reprint the bulk of the stories from Bradbury’s first collection, Dark Carnival. There was almost certainly an earlier NEL edition, but i’ve not put that much effort into finding out. A great book, but not a great NEL if you get me?

Ray Bradbury – The Small Assassin

Ray Bradbury – The Small Assassin (Nel, 1970, 1973)

Richard Clifton-Day

The Small Assassin
The Next In Line
The Lake
The Crowd
Jack-In-The-Box
The Man Upstairs
The Cistern
The Tombstone
The Smiling People
The Handler
Let’s Play “Poison”
The Night
The Dead Man

Blurb

‘Ray Bradbury has long been streets, ahead of anyone else. He has the imagination of Wells coupled with the gift of prose writing” – Daily Telegraph

‘Everything he writes has a glow of individual magic about it’ –Time & Tide

A fantastic journey into a world of beauty and terror with thirteen of the very best of Bradbury.
A baby born with the urge to kill — the couple who leave for a honeymoon, in a cemetery — a husband and wife who had an unpleasant experience with some mummified Mexican corpses — the tombstone in the bedroom — a little boy who examines the macabre entrails of the man upstairs.
A chilling collection that will linger in the dark vaults of your memory, long after you have finished reading it.