Something Wicked this Way Comes

"Ray Bradbury's classic novel, now reissued, tells about the year Halloween came a week early. For Jim, age thirteen, eleven months, and twenty-three days, and his best friend, Will, age thirteen, eleven months, and twenty-four days, it was the week they both grew up. Halloween came and went, but the boys would never be young again. It all began with the handbill blowing down a dark street of their small Midwestern town: Cooger and Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show: See Mephistophele, the Lava Drinker, the Demon Guillotine, the Dangling Man, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World! ... with the seller of lightning rods and his instrument, unlike any the boys had ever seen, etched with all the languages of the world ("Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm?")... with the almost empty arctic coffin waiting for the Most Beautiful Woman in the World. And then it happens: Miss Foley, the seventh-grade teacher, suddenly becomes a little girl, crying... The seller of lightning rods is somehow squashed, compressed into a dwarf.... Mr. Cooger grows younger and younger as the calliope plays him its raucous tune-backwards.... Until the unthinkable has taken place: Mr. Dark, the Illustrated Man, has sealed the bos' lips and paralyzed their limbs; Jim has been imprisoned in the Wax Museum; Will has seen himself shattered in the Maze of Mirrors; and finally, the two best friends have fought each other desperately on the speeding carousel. Only then do the boys, now more than boys, understand that of all the terrors threatening them from Cooger and Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show, the greatest menace lies within themselves. A pervasive stench of evil hangs over this gripping novel, contrasting shockingly with the tang of fresh-cut grass and drugstore sarsaparilla. From the first brilliantly etched scene in the hushed midnight of a small American town to the final terrifying struggle in the crumbling nightmare of the carnival, you know you are in the prescence of a classic. It was acclaimed as such when it was first published, and time has confirmed the judgment. Here are the verities about youth and age, good and evil, darkness and light, tawdriness and splendor-all woven together, thrillingly, with the special Ray Bradbury magic." --