Death Is a Lonely Business
Death Is a Lonely Business

Author: Ray Bradbury

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2013-04-16

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 0062242121

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Ray Bradbury, the undisputed Dean of American storytelling, dips his accomplished pen into the cryptic inkwell of noir and creates a stylish and slightly fantastical tale of mayhem and murder set among the shadows and the murky canals of Venice, California, in the early 1950s. Toiling away amid the looming palm trees and decaying bungalows, a struggling young writer (who bears a resemblance to the author) 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. Starting with a series of peculiar phone calls, the writer then finds clumps of seaweed on his doorstep. But as the incidents escalate, his friends fall victim to a series of mysterious "accidents"--some of them fatal. 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.

Death is a Lonely Business
Death is a Lonely Business

Author: Ray Bradbury

Publisher: HarperCollins UK

Published: 2013-12-05

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 0007541686

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One of Ray Bradbury’s classic noir novels, available in ebook for the first time.

Let's All Kill Constance
Let's All Kill Constance

Author: Ray Bradbury

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2013-04-30

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0062242342

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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.

A Graveyard for Lunatics
A Graveyard for Lunatics

Author: Ray Bradbury

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2013-04-16

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 006224213X

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Halloween Night, 1954. A young, film-obsessed scriptwriter has just been hired at one of the great studios. An anonymous investigation leads from the giant Maximus Films backlot to an eerie graveyard separated from the studio by a single wall. There he makes a terrifying discovery that thrusts him into a maelstrom of intrigue and mystery—and into the dizzy exhilaration of the movie industry at the height of its glittering power.

A Lonely Death
A Lonely Death

Author: Charles Todd

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2011-01-04

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0062034685

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“Todd’s Ian Rutledge mysteries are among the most intelligent and affecting being written these days.” —Washington Post Critics have called Charles Todd’s historical mystery series featuring shell-shocked World War One veteran Inspector Ian Rutledge “remarkable” (New York Times Book Review), “heart-breaking” (Chicago Tribune), “fresh and original” (South Florida Sun-Sentinel). In A Lonely Death, the haunted investigator is back in action, trying to solve the murders of three ex-soldiers in a small English village. A true master of evocative and atmospheric British crime fiction, Charles Todd reaches breathtaking new heights with A Lonely Death—a thrilling tale of the darkness in men’s souls that will have fans of Elizabeth George, Martha Grimes, and Anne Perry cheering.

Bradbury Beyond Apollo
Bradbury Beyond Apollo

Author: Jonathan R. Eller

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2020-08-22

Total Pages: 521

ISBN-13: 0252052293

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Celebrated storyteller, cultural commentator, friend of astronauts, prophet of the Space Age—by the end of the 1960s, Ray Bradbury had attained a level of fame and success rarely achieved by authors, let alone authors of science fiction and fantasy. He had also embarked on a phase of his career that found him exploring new creative outlets while reinterpreting his classic tales for generations of new fans. Drawing on numerous interviews with Bradbury and privileged access to personal papers and private collections, Jonathan R. Eller examines the often-overlooked second half of Bradbury's working life. As Bradbury's dreams took him into a wider range of nonfiction writing and public lectures, the diminishing time that remained for creative pursuits went toward Hollywood productions like the award-winning series Ray Bradbury Theater. Bradbury developed the Spaceship Earth narration at Disney's EPCOT Center; appeared everywhere from public television to NASA events to comic conventions; published poetry; and mined past triumphs for stage productions that enjoyed mixed success. Distracted from storytelling as he became more famous, Bradbury nonetheless published innovative experiments in autobiography masked as detective novels, the well-received fantasy The Halloween Tree and the masterful time travel story "The Toynbee Convector." Yet his embrace of celebrity was often at odds with his passion for writing, and the resulting tension continuously pulled at his sense of self. The revelatory conclusion to the acclaimed three-part biography, Bradbury Beyond Apollo tells the story of an inexhaustible creative force seeking new frontiers.

Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury

Author: Robin Anne Reid

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2000-09-30

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 0313007225

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Reviewers and critics have not always agreed on how well the science fiction label fit Ray Bradbury, but the immense popularity of works like The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man leaves no doubt as to the enduring status of this important writer. This Critical Companion examines, in a Literary Heritage chapter, the situation of Bradbury's works within the science fiction genre and explores thematic concerns that set works like Fahrenheit 451 and Dandelion Wine apart from conventional popular SF writings. This introduction to Bradbury, written especially for students, traces Bradbury's interesting life, examining his early literary efforts, his forays into Hollywood, and his recent writing projects. Eight of Bradbury's major works are discussed at length, each in its own chapter, including two works published within the last ten years: A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990) and Green Shadows, White Whale (1992). Clear, thoughtful analysis is also given for The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Death Is a Lonely Business. In each chapter, analysis of the important literary components is given: plot, setting, characters, and themes. In addition, the genesis, critical reception, and an alternate reading of each work is also discussed in clear terms for students and general readers. Suggestions for further reading on Bradbury and his writings are also provided in a select yet extensive bibliography. This volume is ideal both for students reading Bradbury for the first time and for dedicated Bradbury fans who wish to appreciate his work with a deeper critical perspective.

Killer, Come Back To Me: The Crime Stories of Ray Bradbury
Killer, Come Back To Me: The Crime Stories of Ray Bradbury

Author: Ray Bradbury

Publisher: Titan Books (US, CA)

Published: 2020-09-22

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1789095409

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Celebrating Ray Bradbury's centennial, a deluxe illustrated commemorative collection of his finest crime stories -- tales as strange and wonderful as his signature fantasy. Time travelers...dark carnivals...living automata...and detectives? Honoring the 100th birthday of Ray Bradbury, renowned author of Fahrenheit 451, this new, definitive collection of the master's less well-known crime fiction, published in a high-grade premium collectible edition, features classic stories and rare gems, a number of which became episodes of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS and THE RAY BRADBURY THEATER, including the tale Bradbury called "one of the best stories in any field that I have ever written." Is it murder to destroy a robot if it looks and speaks and thinks and feels like a human being? Can a ventriloquist be incriminated by the testimony of his own dummy? Can a time traveler prevent his younger self from killing the woman they both loved? And can the survivor of a pair of Siamese twins investigate his own brother's murder? No other writer has ever rivaled the imagination and narrative gifts of Ray Bradbury, and the 20 unforgettable stories in this collection demonstrate this singular writer's extraordinary range, influence and emotional power.

The Death of a Nobody
The Death of a Nobody

Author: Jules Romains

Publisher:

Published: 1914

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13:

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The subject of this modern classic is not a man. "It is an event," says Jules Romains, who is considered "the French Dos Passos." The event starts with the death of Jacques Godard, a man of no importance. It unfolds through his brief survival in the minds of others - the porter of his tenement in Paris, his fellow lodgers, a few acquaintances, his old father, who comes up from the country for the funeral, a young stranger who feels that the dead pass into "a great soul that cannot die." The event expresses Romains's belief in "collective beings," the famous theory of "Unanimism." In dramatizing his theory, Romains developed an advanced motion-picture technique when films were in their infancy, a technique of group portraits and sudden shifts from scene to scene that keeps this work far ahead of conventional novels. Here, Romains explores the ideas and the devices used in his twenty-seven-volume masterpiece, Men of Good Will, which André Maurois calls "the boldest attempt to describe completely his own time that any French novelist has made since Balzac."