Synopses & Reviews
From Ray Bradbury, the recipient of the National Book Foundation's 2000 Medal comes a magical collection of short fiction.
Ray Bradbury is one of the most celebrated fiction writers of the 20th century. He is the author of such classics as Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Bradbury has once again pulled together a stellar group of stories sure to delight readers young and old, old and new. In One More For The Road we are treated to the best this talented writer has to offer : the eerie and strange, nostalgic and bittersweet, searching and speculative. Here are a father's regrets, a lover's last embrace, a child's dreams of the future 栬l delivered with the trademark Bradbury wit and style.
Review
"Relaxing into his favorite themes memory, loneliness, childhood, love and time [Bradbury] is not afraid to wax sentimental, but the sharp edge of his prose keeps the tales from cloying....The pure joy of earthly existence is something Bradbury has never forgotten." Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
America has no finer teller of tales than Ray Bradbury. Now the master treats us to another round -- eighteen brand-new stories and seven previously published but never before collected -- a rich elixir distilled from the pungent fruit of experience and imagination, expertly prepared by a superior mixologist.This glass overflows with a heady brew: a house where time has no boundaries; the comforts of arguments eternal; the ghosts of dear friends, errant sons and lost fathers; the addictive terror of a pre-dawn phone call. It is a superb refreshment served with wit, heart, and flair by the incomparable Bradbury. And every satisfying swallow brings new surprises and revelations.
About the Author
Ray Bradbury, American novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and poet, was born August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois. He graduated from a Los Angeles high school in 1938. Although his formal education ended there, he became a "student of life," selling newspapers on L.A. street corners from 1938 to 1942, spending his nights in the public library and his days at the typewriter. He became a full-time writer in 1943, and contributed numerous short stories to periodicals before publishing a collection of them,
Dark Carnival, in 1947.
His reputation as a writer of courage and vision was established with the publication of The Martian Chronicles in 1950, which describes the first attempts of Earth people to conquer and colonize Mars, and the unintended consequences. Next came The Illustrated Man and then, in 1953, Fahrenheit 451, which many consider to be Bradbury's masterpiece, a scathing indictment of censorship set in a future world where the written word is forbidden. In an attempt to salvage their history and culture, a group of rebels memorize entire works of literature and philosophy as their books are burned by the totalitarian state. Other works include The October Country, Dandelion Wine, A Medicine for Melancholy, Something Wicked This Way Comes, I Sing the Body Electric!, Quicker Than the Eye, and Driving Blind. In all, Bradbury has published more than thirty books, close to 600 short stories, and numerous poems, essays, and plays. His short stories have appeared in more than 1,000 school curriculum "recommended reading" anthologies.
Married since 1947, Mr. Bradbury and his wife Maggie live in Los Angeles with their four beloved cats.They have four daughters and eight grandchildren.
Table of Contents
First day -- Heart transplant -- Quid pro quo -- After the ball -- In memoriam -- Tete-a-tete -- Dragon danced at midnight -- Nineteenth -- Beasts -- Autumn afternoon -- Where all is emptiness there is room to move -- One-woman show -- Laurel and Hardy alpha centauri farewell tour -- Leftovers -- One more for the road -- Tangerine -- With smiles as wide as summer -- Time intervening -- Enemy in the wheat -- Fore! -- My son, Max -- F. Scott/Tolstoy/Ahab accumulator -- Well, what do you have to say for yourself? -- Diane de Foret -- Cricket on the hearth -- Afterword: Metaphors, the breakfast of champions.