Ray Bradbury has 30 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 58 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.2★ across 1,261 ratings. The most-rated is Fahrenheit 451.
Fahrenheit 451
Summary
Ray Bradbury's internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 is a masterwork of 20th-century literature set in a bleak, dystopian future, narrated here by Academy Award-winning actor Tim Robbins. Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family". But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television. When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.
©1951 Ray Bradbury (P)2014 Audible Inc.
The Martian Chronicles
Summary
Mars was a distant shore, and the men spread upon it in wave.... Each wave different, and each wave stronger. Ray Bradbury is a storyteller without peer, a poet of the possible, and, indisputably, one of America's most beloved authors. In a much-celebrated literary career that has spanned six decades, he has produced an astonishing body of work: unforgettable novels, including Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes; essays, theatrical works, screenplays and teleplays; The Illustrated Mein, Dandelion Wine, The October Country, and numerous other superb short story collections. But of all the dazzling stars in the vast Bradbury universe, none shines more luminous than these masterful chronicles of Earth's settlement of the fourth world from the sun. Bradbury's Mars is a place of hope, dreams, and metaphor - of crystal pillars and fossil seas - where a fine dust settles on the great, empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. It is here the invaders have come to despoil and commercialize, to grow and to learn - first a trickle, then a torrent, rushing from a world with no future toward a promise of tomorrow. The Earthman conquers Mars...and then is conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race. Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is a classic work of 20th-century literature whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time's passage. In connected, chronological stories, a true grandmaster once again enthralls, delights, and challenges us with his vision and his heart - starkly and stunningly exposing in brilliant spacelight our strength, our weakness, our folly, and our poignant humanity on a strange and breathtaking world where humanity does not belong.
©1945, 1946, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977 Ray Bradbury (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Summary
Few American novels written this century have endured in the heart and mind as has this one - Ray Bradbury's incomparable masterwork of the dark fantastic. A carnival rolls in sometime after the midnight hour on a chill Midwestern October eve, ushering in Halloween a week before its time. A calliope's shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. In this season of dying, Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. And two inquisitive boys standing precariously on the brink of adulthood will soon discover the secret of the satanic raree-show's smoke, mazes, and mirrors, as they learn all too well the heavy cost of wishes - and the stuff of nightmare.
©1962 Ray Bradbury (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Fahrenheit 451
Summary
451 degrés Fahrenheit représentent la température à laquelle un livre s'enflamme et se consume. Dans cette société future où la lecture, source de questionnement et de réflexion, est considérée comme un acte antisocial, un corps spécial de pompiers est chargé de brûler tous les livres, dont la détention est interdite pour le bien collectif.
Montag, le pompier pyromane, se met pourtant à rêver d'un monde différent, qui nae bannirait pas la littérature et l'imaginaire au profit d'un bonheur immédiatement consommable. Il devient dès lors un dangereux criminel, impitoyablement pourchassé par une société qui désavoue son passé.
Christophe Montenez interprète avec énergie ce classique de la science-fiction, ode intemporelle à la lecture et à la curiosité.
©1995 Éditions Denoël. Traduit par Jacques Chambon et Henri Robillot (P)2018 Éditions Gallimard
My Secret Garden
Summary
Nancy Friday's taboo-shattering best seller My Secret Garden is the most popular and controversial book of women's sexual fantasies ever published. Women who feared their erotic fantasies called it scandalous. Women who recognized their own fantasies in its pages, rejoiced. Outspoken, graphic, vulnerable and shameless, My Secret Garden is a classic study of female sexuality. Friday interviewed hundreds of women from every part of the country to learn their sexual private thoughts, and she listened like no one else. Now in audio for the first time, a multi-cast group of top actors dramatize the real voices of women speaking freely like they never had before.
©1973, 2001, 2013 Nancy Friday (P)2018 Audible, Inc.
The Halloween Tree
Summary
On Halloween night, eight trick-or-treaters gather at the haunted house by the edge of town, ready for adventure. But when something whisks their friend Pip away, only one man, the sinister Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud, can help the boys find him. "If you want to know what Halloween is, or if you simply want an eerie adventure, take this mystery history trip. You couldn't ask for better than master fantasizer Ray Bradbury," raves The Boston Globe.
© 1972, 2000 Ray Bradbury (P) 2017 Recorded Books
Zen in the Art of Writing
Summary
"Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a land mine. The land mine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces back together. Now, it's your turn. Jump!" Zest. Gusto. Curiosity. These are the qualities every writer must have, as well as a spirit of adventure. In this exuberant book, the incomparable Ray Bradbury shares the wisdom, experience, and excitement of a lifetime of writing. Here are practical tips on the art of writing from a master of the craft - everything from finding original ideas to developing your own voice and style - as well as the inside story of Bradbury's own remarkable career as a prolific author of novels, stories, poems, films, and plays. Zen in the Art of Writing is more than just a how-to manual for the would-be writer: it is a celebration of the act of writing itself that will delight, impassion, and inspire the writer in you. In it, Bradbury encourages us to follow the unique path of our instincts and enthusiasms to the place where our inner genius dwells, and he shows that success as a writer depends on how well you know one subject: your own life.
©1994 Ray Bradbury Enterprises (P)2018 Recorded Books
The October Country
Summary
Haunting, harrowing, and downright horrifying, this classic collection from the modern master of the fantastic features: "The Small Assassin": a fine, healthy baby boy was the new mother's dream come true - or her nightmare.... "The Emissary": the faithful dog was the sick boy's only connection with the world outside - and beyond.... "The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone": a most remarkable case of murder - the deceased was delighted! And more!
©1955 Ray Bradbury (P)2018 Recorded Books
Dandelion Wine
Summary
Ray Bradbury's moving recollection of a vanished golden era remains one of his most enchanting novels. Dandelion Wine stands out in the Bradbury literary canon as the author's most deeply personal work, a semi-autobiographical recollection of a magical small-town summer in 1928. Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green Town, Illinois, is as vast and deep as the whole wide world that lies beyond the city limits. It is a pair of brand-new tennis shoes, the first harvest of dandelions for Grandfather's renowned intoxicant, the distant clang of the trolley's bell on a hazy afternoon. It is yesteryear and tomorrow blended into an unforgettable always. But as young Douglas is about to discover, summer can be more than the repetition of established rituals whose mystical power holds time at bay. It can be a best friend moving away, a human time machine who can transport you back to the Civil War, or a sideshow automaton able to glimpse the bittersweet future. Come and savor Ray Bradbury's priceless distillation of all that is eternal about boyhood and summer.
©1957 Ray Bradbury (P)2017 Recorded Books
I Sing the Body Electric!
Summary
The mind of Ray Bradbury is a wonder-filled carnival of delight and terror that stretches from the verdant Irish countryside to the coldest reaches of outer space. Yet all his work is united by one common thread: a vivid and profound understanding of the vast set of emotions that bring strength and mythic resonance to our frail species. Bradbury characters may find themselves anywhere - and anywhen. A horrified mother may give birth to a strange blue pyramid. A man may take Abraham Lincoln out of the grave - and meet another who puts him back. An amazing Electrical Grandmother may come to live with a grieving family. An old parrot may have learned over long evenings to imitate the voice of Ernest Hemingway and become the last link to the last link to the great man. A priest on Mars may confront his fondest dream: to meet the Messiah. Each of these magnificent creations has something to tell us about our own humanity - and all of their fates await you in this new edition of 28 classic Bradbury stories and one luscious poem. Travel on an unpredictable and unforgettable literary journey, safe in the hands of one of the great men of imagination. The stories included are "The Kilimanjaro Device", "The Terrible Conflagration Up at the Place", "Tomorrow's Child", "The Women", "The Inspired Chicken Motel", "Downwind from Gettysburg", "Yes, We'll Gather at the River", "The Cold Wind and the Warm", "Night Call, Collect", "The Haunting of the New", "I Sing the Body Electric!" "The Tombling Day", "Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's Is a Friend of Mine", "Heavy-Set", "The Man in the Rorschach Shirt", "Henry the Ninth", "The Lost City of Mars", "The Blue Bottle", "One Timeless Spring", "The Parrot Who Met Papa", "The Burning Man", "A Piece of Wood", "The Messiah", "G.B.S.---Mark V", "The Utterly Perfect Murder", "Punishment Without Crime", "Getting Through Sunday Somehow", "Drink Entire: Against the Madness of Crowds", and "Christus Apollo".
©1969 Ray Bradbury, renewed 1997 by Ray Bradbury (P)2010 Tantor
Farewell Summer
Summary
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.
Public Domain (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
Dandelion Wine
Summary
Ray Bradbury's moving recollection of a vanished golden era remains one of his most enchanting novels. Dandelion Wine stands out in the Bradbury literary canon as the author's most deeply personal work, a semi-autobiographical recollection of a magical small-town summer in 1928. Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green Town, Illinois, is as vast and deep as the whole wide world that lies beyond the city limits. It is a pair of brand-new tennis shoes, the first harvest of dandelions for Grandfather's renowned intoxicant, the distant clang of the trolley's bell on a hazy afternoon, It is yesteryear and tomorrow blended into an unforgettable always. But as young Douglas is about to discover, summer can be more than the repetition of established rituals whose mystical power holds time at bay. It can be a best friend moving away, a human time machine who can transport you back to the Civil War, or a sideshow automaton able to glimpse the bittersweet future. Come and savor Bradbury's priceless distillation of all that is eternal about boyhood and summer.
©1957 Ray Bradbury, renewed 1985 by Ray Bradbury (P)2010 Tantor
The Playground
Summary
The Playground was part of the first hardcover edition of Ray Bradbury's legendary work Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953. In the story, Charles Underhill is a widower who will do anything to protect his young son Jim from the horrors of the playground - a playground which he and the boy pass by daily and the tumult of which, the activity, brings back to Charles the anguish of his own childhood. The playground, like childhood itself, is a nightmare of torment and vulnerability; Charles fears his sensitive son will be destroyed there just as he almost was so many years ago. Underhill's sister Carol, who has moved in to help raise the young boy after his mother passed away, feels differently. The playground, she believes, is preparation for life, Jim will survive the experience she feels, and he will be the better for it and more equipped to deal with the rigor and obligation of adult existence.Underhill is caught between his own fear and his sister's invocation of reason and feels paralyzed. A mysterious boy calls out to him from the playground, and seems to know all too well why Underhill is there and what the source of his agony really is. A mysterious Manager also lurks to whom the strange boy directs Underhill. An agreement can be made perhaps - this is what the boy tells Underhill. Perhaps Jim can be spared the playground, but of course, a substitute must be found.
©1953 Ray Bradbury (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Green Shadows, White Whale
Summary
From the recipient of the National Book Foundation's 2000 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters comes "[Bradbury's] most entertaining book in a distinguished 50-year career" (Time). In 1953, a young Ray Bradbury is summoned to Ireland by the brilliant but terrifying titan of cinema, John Huston. His mission: capture on paper the fiercest of all literary beasts - Moby Dick. But from the moment he sets foot on Irish soil, the author embarks on an unexpected odyssey. As Bradbury works and wrangles with the renowned director to craft a workable screenplay so filming can begin, he also develops a love affair with the beautiful, mysterious land of Ireland and its inhabitants. Here is the story of what happens when the visions of three creative geniuses - Bradbury, Huston, and Melville - collide, set against the beguiling backdrop of the Emerald Isle.
©1992, 2002 Ray Bradbury (P)2017 Recorded Books
X Minus One: The Veldt (August 4, 1955)
Summary
X Minus One premiered in April 1955 on NBC and ran until January 1958. Like its predecessor series, Dimension X, X Minus One featured stories by the greatest names in modern science fiction: Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Clifford Simak, Robert Bloch, and many more.
Public Domain (P)2012 BN Publishing
The Golden Apples of the Sun
Summary
Ray Bradbury is a modern cultural treasure. His disarming simplicity of style underlies a towering body of work unmatched in metaphorical power by any other American storyteller. And here are 32 of his most famous tales - prime examples of the poignant and mysterious poetry that Bradbury uniquely uncovers in the depths of the human soul, the otherwordly portraits that spring from the canvas of one of the century's great men of imagination. From a lonely coastal lighthouse to a 60-million-year-old safari, from the pouring rain of Venus to the ominous silence of a murder scene, Ray Bradbury is our sure-handed guide not only to surprising and outrageous manifestations of the future but also to the wonders of the present that we could never have imagined on our own.
©1953, renewed 1981 Ray Bradbury (P)2010 Tantor
Selected Shorts: A Touch of Magic
Summary
By turns funny, moving, romantic and surreal, and filled with unexpected twists and turns, each of the tales on this lineup has a magical element. Andrew Lam's "The Palmist", performed by James Naughton. A chance encounter on a bus between a fortune-teller and a teenage boy. Ray Bradbury's "The Veldt", performed by Stephen Colbert. A room which can take you anywhere in the world - sometimes with dangerous consequences W. W. Jacobs' "The Monkey's Paw", performed by John Lithgow. A wonderful ghost story about a trinket with terrible powers. Saki's "The Occasional Garden", performed by Daniel Gerroll. If you can't grow a garden; poof! - you can rent one. Donald Barthelme's "The Balloon", performed by Maria Tucci. There's something suddenly in the sky in midtown Manhattan.... Kevin Brockmeier's "The Year of Silence", performed by Anthony Rapp. What if everything went quiet? Jonathan Safran Foer's "The Sixth Borough", performed by Jerry Zaks. Yes, New York had a Sixth Borough, but it drifted away.... Aimee Bender's "Drunken Mimi", performed by Bernadette Quigley. A romance between a mermaid and an imp. Haruki Murakami's "The Little Green Monster", performed by Dana Ivey. A piece of Murakami magic: Is this a monster I see before me? T. C. Boyle's "Swept Away", performed by René Auberjonois. This story's weather forecast: Very windy and very funny.
©2009 Symphony Space (P)2009 Symphony Space
The Martian Chronicles
Summary
Derek Jacobi and Hayley Atwell lead an all-star cast in The Martian Chronicles, a thrilling new dramatisation reimagining Ray Bradbury’s timeless fable of doomed Martian colonisation. When the first expedition to Mars mysteriously disappears, Earth sends a second to find out what happened. But the real mission is classified. And only Captain Wilder knows the truth. Spender, an anthropologist on Wilder’s crew, attempts to prevent the colonisation that she believes will eradicate the last of an ancient people living on Mars. But to what lengths will she go? As the honourable but duty-bound Captain Wilder tracks the now rogue Spender into the Martian mountains, the future of this ancient planet is at stake. Meanwhile, Earth itself teeters on the brink of its own global catastrophe as the very survival of humanity hangs in the balance.... This audio release also includes a special behind-the-scenes mini documentary with interviews from the stars, plus six special teasers examining the Martian culture!
©2015 B7 Enterprises Ltd (P)2015 B7 Enterprises Ltd
Let's All Kill Constance
Summary
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.
©2003 Ray Bradbury (P)2018 Recorded Books
Quicker Than the Eye
Summary
The internationally acclaimed author of The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury is a magician at the height of his powers, displaying his sorcerer's skill with 21 remarkable stories that run the gamut from total reality to light fantastic, from high noon to long after midnight. A true master tells all, revealing the strange secret of growing young and mad; opening a Witch Door that links two intolerant centuries; joining an ancient couple in their wild assassination games; celebrating life and dreams in the unique voice that has favored him across six decades and has enchanted millions of fans the world over.
©1996 Ray Bradbury (P)2018 Recorded Books