The October Country

Explore the outer limits of the imagination with the GrandMaster of American Literature, Ray Bradbury, in a dark and disquieting descentinto The October Country. Readers of The Martian Chronicles and TheIllustrated Man, as well as fans of H. P. Lovecraft, Rod Serling, Bram Stoker, Stephen King,and writers of other classic horror stories, will be captivated by TheOctober Country’s nineteen astonishing tales. From drowned cities tofrantic carnivals to forgotten Mexican villages, Bradbury offers anunforgettable journey into mystery, shining brief lights upon the darkestcorners of the soul.

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.

Each of the stories in Ray Bradbury’s masterful collection is a wonder, imagined by an acclaimed tale-teller writing from a place of shadows. But there is astonishing beauty here as well, born from a prose that enchants and enthralls, that chills like a long-after-midnight wind, that lifts the reader high above a sleeping Earth on strange wings. In The October Country, there is no escaping the dark stranger who lives upstairs . . . or the reaper who wields the world.

“One of this country’s most beloved writers…A great storyteller, sometimes even a mythmaker, a true American classic.”   - Washington Post

“An author whose fanciful imagination, poetic prose, and mature understanding of human character have won him an international reputation.” - New York Times

“Without Ray Bradbury there would be no Stephen King, at least as he grew. Bradbury was one of my nurturing influences. First in EC Comics, then in Weird Tales... What was striking was how far down the viscera he was able to delve into these stories—how far beyond the prudish stopped-point of his 1940s contemporaries. In that sense, Ray was to the horror story what D.H. Lawrence was to the story of sexual love.”  - Stephen King

“How I passed so much of my life without devouring everything Ray Bradbury has ever read is beyond me...on the bright side, how fortunate I am to experience all this for the first time! My God.”  - R. F. Kuang

“A prescient, lyrical writer with an abiding hatred for intolerance, Bradbury influenced generations of readers and many of our most famous dreamers, from Stephen King to Steven Spielberg.”  - Junot Diaz