The Whole Town's Sleeping -- The Rocket -- Season of Disbelief -- And the Rock Cried Out -- The Drummer Boy of Shiloh -- The Beggar on O'Connell Bridge -- The Flying Machine -- Heavy-Set -- The First Night of Lent -- Lafayette, Farewell -- Remember Sascha? -- Junior -- That Woman on the Lawn -- February 1999: Ylla -- Banshee -- One for His Lordship, and One for the Road! -- The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair -- Unterderseaboat Doktor -- Another Fine Mess -- The Dwarf -- A Wild Night in Galway -- The Wind -- No News, or What Killed the Dog? -- A Little Journey -- Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's Is a Friend of Mine -- The Garbage Collector -- The Visitor -- The Man -- Henry the Ninth -- The Messiah -- Bang! You're Dead! -- Darling Adolf -- The Beautiful Shave -- Colonel Stonesteel's Genuine Home-made Truly Egyptian Mummy -- I See You Never -- The Exiles -- At Midnight, in the Month of June -- The Witch Door -- The Watchers -- 2004-05: The Naming of Names -- Hopscotch -- The Illustrated Man -- The Dead Man -- June 2001: And the Moon Be Still as Bright -- The Burning Man -- G.B.S.--Mark V -- A Blade of Grass -- The Sound of Summer Running -- And the Sailor, Home from the Sea -- The Lonely Ones -- The Finnegan -- On the Orient, North -- The Smiling People -- The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl -- Bug -- Downwind from Gettysburg -- Time in Thy Flight -- Changeling -- The Dragon -- Let's Play "Poison" -- The Cold Wind and the Warm -- The Meadow -- The Kilimanjaro Device -- The Man in the Rorschach Shirt -- Bless Me, Father, for I Have Sinned -- The Pedestrian -- Trapdoor -- The Swan -- The Sea Shell -- Once More, Legato -- June 2003: Way in the Middle of the Air -- The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone -- By the Numbers! -- April 2005: Usher II -- The Square Pegs -- The Trolley -- The Smile -- The Miracles of Jamie -- A Far-away Guitar -- The Cistern -- The Machineries of Joy -- Bright Phoenix -- The Wish -- The Lifework of Juan Diaz -- Time Intervening/Interim -- Almost the End of the World -- The Great Collision of Monday Last -- The Poems -- April 2026: The Long Years -- Icarus Montgolfier Wright -- Death and the Maiden -- Zero Hour -- The Toynbee Convector -- Forever and the Earth -- The Handler -- Getting Through Sunday Somehow -- The Pumpernickel -- Last Rites -- The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse -- All on a Summer's Night.

For more than sixty years, the imagination of Ray Bradbury has opened doors into remarkable places, ushering us across unexplored territories of the heart and mind while leading us inexorably toward a profound understanding of ourselves and the universe we inhabit. In this landmark volume, America's preeminent storyteller offers us one hundred treasures from a lifetime of words and ideas -- tales that amaze, enthrall, and horrify; breathtaking journeys backward and forward in time; classic stories with the undiminished power to tantalize, mystify, elate, and move the reader to tears. Each small gem in the master's collection remains as dazzling as when it first appeared in print.

There is magic in these pages: the wonders of interstellar flight, a conspiracy of insects, the early bloom of love in the warmth of August. Both the world of Ray Bradbury and its people are vivid and alive, as colorfully unique as a poker chip hand-painted by a brilliant artist or as warmly familiar as the well-used settings on a family's dining room table. In a poor man's desire for the stars, in the twisted night games of a hateful embalmer, in a magnificent fraud perpetrated to banish despair and repair a future, in a writer's wonderful death is the glowing proof of the timeless artistry of one of America's greatest living bards.

The one hundred stories in this volume were chosen by Bradbury himself, and span a career that blossomed in the pulp magazines of the early 1940s and continues to flourish in the new millennium. Here are representatives of the legendary author's finest works of short fiction, including many that have not been republished for decades, all forever fresh and vital, evocative and immensely entertaining. This is Bradbury at his very best -- golden visions of tomorrow, poetic memories of yesterday, dark nightmares and glorious dreams -- a grand celebration of humankind, God's intricate yet poignantly fallible machineries of joy.