Let's All Kill Constance

Let's All Kill Constance
Author: Ray Bradbury
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2013-04-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062242342

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
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2013-04-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 006224213X

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.

Death Is a Lonely Business

Death Is a Lonely Business
Author: Ray Bradbury
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2013-04-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062242121

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.

The Last Adventure of Constance Verity

The Last Adventure of Constance Verity
Author: A. Lee Martinez
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2016-07-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1481443534

Constance Verity has been saving the world since she was seven, and she’s sick of it. She sets off on one last adventure to reset her destiny and become the one thing she’s never been: ordinary. Ever since she was granted a wish at birth by her fairy godmother, Constance Verity has become the world’s great adventurer. She is a master of martial arts, a keen detective, and possesses a collection of strange artifacts. Constance has spent the past twenty-eight years saving the world, and she’s tired of it. All she wants is to work in an office and date a nice, normal guy. And she’s figured a way out. The only problem is that saving the world is Constance’s destiny. She’s great at it, and there are forces at work to make sure she stays in the job. Then again, it’s also her destiny to have a glorious death.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Author: Shirley Jackson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 188
Release: 1962
Genre: Castles
ISBN:

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate.

Doomsday Book

Doomsday Book
Author: Connie Willis
Publisher: Spectra
Total Pages: 593
Release: 1993-08-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0553562738

Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering, and the indomitable will of the human spirit. “A tour de force.”—The New York Times Book Review For Kivrin, preparing to travel back in time to study one of the deadliest eras in humanity’s history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received. But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin—barely of age herself—finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history’s darkest hours.

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)
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2020-09-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1789095409

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 Secret History

The Secret History
Author: Donna Tartt
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 578
Release: 2004-04-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1400031702

A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK • INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A contemporary literary classic and "an accomplished psychological thriller ... absolutely chilling" (Village Voice), from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Goldfinch. Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality. “A remarkably powerful novel [and] a ferociously well-paced entertainment.... Forceful, cerebral, and impeccably controlled.” —The New York Times

Farewell Summer

Farewell Summer
Author: Ray Bradbury
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2013-05-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0061830011

The master of American fiction returns to the territory of his beloved classic, Dandelion Wine—a sequel 50 years in the making Some summers refuse to end . . . October 1st, the end of summer. The air is still warm, but fall is in the air. Thirteen-year-old Douglas Spaulding, his younger brother Tom, and their friends do their best to take advantage of these last warm days, rampaging through the ravine, tormenting the girls . . . and declaring war on the old men who run Green Town, IL. For the boys know that Colonel Quartermain and his cohorts want nothing more than to force them to put away their wild ways, to settle down, to grow up. If only, the boys believe, they could stop the clock atop the courthouse building. Then, surely, they could hold onto the last days of summer . . . and their youth. But the old men were young once, too. And Quartermain, crusty old guardian of the school board and town curfew, is bent on teaching the boys a lesson. What he doesn’t know is that before the last leaf turns, the boys will give him a gift: they will teach him the importance of not being afraid of letting go.