The October Country

Today being the first of October, it seems fitting to mention a book that I always enjoy revisiting this time of year.

The October Country, by Ray Bradbury, is a classic collection of short stories to put you in the proper frame of mind as Halloween approaches (also see The Halloween Tree post).

As described on the authors website, 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. THE OCTOBER COUNTRY'S inhabitants live, dream, work, die--and sometimes live again--discovering, often too late, the high price of citizenship. Here a glass jar can hold memories and nightmares; a woman's newborn child can plot murder; and a man's skeleton can war against him. Here there is no escaping the dark stranger who lives upstairs...or the reaper who wields the world. Each of these stories is a wonder, imagined by an acclaimed tale-teller writing from a place shadows. But there is astonishing beauty in these shadows, born from a prose that enchants and enthralls. Ray Bradbury's THE OCTOBER COUNTRY is a land of metaphors that can chill like a long-after-midnight wind...as they lift the reader high above a sleeping Earth on the strange wings of Uncle Einar.