I’m so pleased to be leading another discussion for the Center for Fiction’s “In Short” Reading Group series—this one on Wednesday evening, August 6, and focused on two Ray Bradbury stories. Here’s the description:
While better celebrated as a science fiction writer, Ray Bradbury was also a master of mystery and suspense, particularly in the short story format. His early fiction was published in pulp magazines, and across a seven-decade career, he continued to pen tales mixing crime, noir, and the supernatural to fascinating ends. Two linked stories about a serial killer in a small town provide a unique opportunity to examine Bradbury’s work in these genres: “The Whole Town’s Sleeping,” published in McCall’s in 1950, and its supremely darker companion, “At Midnight, in the Month of June” (1954), written specifically at the behest of the editor of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.