Honestly I picked this book up because it had Ray Bradbury’s name on the cover and I’m sad to say I had never before heard of Charles Finney’s story about Dr. Lao. The story -- which takes up almost half of this papaerback -- is a strange and fantastical story of a completely amazing circus that comes into a small town and winds up impressing no one. Sort of. The book was made into a regrettable movie with Tony Randall and I’m quite happy I wound up finding myself a copy.

The rest of the stories in this book are also quite strong. Bradbury has collected many disparate authors, from Shirley Jackson to Roald Dahl to Nathaniel Hawthorne, who all tell fantasy stories about bad things that can happen to quite normal people in a world that is slightly different from ours.