“What are Ray Bradbury’s Best Books?” We looked at all of Bradburys authored bibliography and ranked them against one another to answer that very question!

We took all of the books written by Ray Bradbury and looked at their Goodreads, Amazon, and LibraryThing scores, ranking them against one another to see which books came out on top. The books are ranked in our list below based on which titles have the highest overall score between all 3 review sites in comparison with all of the other books by the same author. The process isn’t super scientific and in reality, most books aren’t “better” than other books as much as they are just different. That being said, we do enjoy seeing where our favorites landed, and if you aren’t familiar with the author at all, the rankings can help you see what books might be best to start with.

The full ranking chart is also included below the countdown on the bottom of the page.

Happy Scrolling!

The Top Book’s Of Ray Bradbury

82 ) Thomas Jefferson

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 76
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 72

Examines the life of the multitalented man who is remembered as the third president of the United States as well as the writer of the Declaration of Independence and the founder of the University of Virginia.

81 ) Orange County

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 74
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 72

80 ) Let’s All Kill Constance

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 73
• Amazon: 61
• LibraryThing: 71

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.

79 ) Leviathan 99

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 67
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 64

78 ) The Cat’s Pajamas

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 76
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 53

77 ) The Haunted Computer and The Android Pope

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 71
• Amazon: 59
• LibraryThing: 61

76 ) The Art Of Playboy

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 72
• Amazon: 46
• LibraryThing: 72

75 ) Ahmed and The Oblivion Machines

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 65
• Amazon: 56
• LibraryThing: 56

Bradbury’s “Ahmed and the Oblivion Macines” is a fable for adults and children alike about the importance of letting dreams take flight. It is the adventure of the daydreaming Ahmed, the twelve year-old son of a caravan leader. During an evening trek across the desert, Ahmed falls from his camel and is left behind only to discover and awaken the ancient god Gonn-Ben-Allah. The god, thankful for his salvation, bestows on Ahmed the gift of flight and together they journey through space and time, witnessing the wonders of the world yet-to-come or that-has-been. It is this journey, in true mythological fashion, that transforms the child by bestowing him wisdom and granting him the courage to make his dreams come true.

73 ) The Dragon Who Ate His Tail

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 49
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 59

73 ) We’Ll Always Have Paris

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 61
• Amazon: 63
• LibraryThing: 51

Over the course of a storied literary career that has spanned more than half a century, Ray Bradbury has taken us to wonderful places: across vast oceans to foreign lands, onto summer porches of small-town America, through dark and dangerous forests where predators wait, into the hypnotic mists of dream, back to a halcyon past to remember, forward into an exhilarating future, and rocketing through outer space. In We’ll Always Have Paris—a new collection of never-before-published stories—the inimitable Bradbury once again does what few writers have ever done as well. He delights us with prose that soars and sings. He surprises and inspires, exposing truths and provoking deep thought.

72 ) They Have Not Seen the Stars

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 54
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 53

71 ) Frost and Fire

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 63
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 43

70 ) Farewell Summer

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 54
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 48

In a summer that refuses to end, in the deceiving warmth of earliest October, civil war has come to Green Town, Illinois. It is the age-old conflict: the young against the elderly, for control of the clock that ticks their lives ever forward. The first cap-pistol shot heard ’round the town is dead accurate, felling an old man in his tracks, compelling town elder and school board despot Mr. Calvin C. Quartermain to marshal his graying forces and declare total war on the assassin, thirteen-year-old Douglas Spaulding, and his downy-cheeked cohorts. Doug and his cronies, however, are most worthy adversaries who should not be underestimated, as they plan and execute daring campaigns—matching old Quartermain’s experience and cunning with their youthful enthusiasm and devil-may-care determination to hold on forever to childhood’s summer. Yet time must ultimately be the victor, with valuable revelations for those on both sides of the conflict.

69 ) One More For the Road

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 56
• Amazon: 54
• LibraryThing: 57

Eerie and strange, nostalgic and bittersweet, searching and speculative, here are 25 stories: of a father’s regrets, a lover’s last embrace, a child’s dreams of the future–delivered with Bradbury’s wit and style.

67 ) The Smile

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 37
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 61

In 2061, in a world ravaged by war and filled with hatred for the past, a young boy is present at the destruction of the Mona Lisa.

67 ) The Last Circus the Electrocution

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 76
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 22

66 ) Where Everything Ends

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 75
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 22

65 ) Driving Blind

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 58
• Amazon: 46
• LibraryThing: 58

Reading Ray Bradbury is like going through a door into a nostalgic, odd America that never existed, a universe of strange possibility that brings to mind the haunting memories of childhood. The short stories in Driving Blind are vintage Bradbury, with a pleasant smattering of ideas: dark fantasy, boyhood sense of wonder, Twilight Zone-esque twist.

64 ) The Mummies Of Guanajuato

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 30
• Amazon: 59
• LibraryThing: 72

63 ) The Toynbee Convector

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 49
• Amazon: 61
• LibraryThing: 50

62 ) Pillar Of Fire and Other Plays

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 40
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 49

61 ) Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round In Robot Towns

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 70
• Amazon: 14
• LibraryThing: 69

58 ) With Cat For Comforter

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 42
• Amazon: 46
• LibraryThing: 61

58 ) Death Is a Lonely Business

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 49
• Amazon: 56
• LibraryThing: 44

The image of drowned circus cages in the trash-filled canals of Venice, California, both haunts and illuminates famed fantasy and science fiction author Ray Bradbury’s rare venture into the mystery field. Like filmmaker Federico Fellini, Bradbury is fascinated by the seedy splendor of cheap carnivals and circuses–“a long time before, in the early Twenties, these cages had probably rolled by like bright summer storms with animals prowling them, lions opening their mouths to exhale hot meat breaths. Teams of white horses had dragged their pomp through Venice and across the fields.” But now it’s the early 1950s, and foggy, shabby Venice is the last stop on the circus train for scores of old silent-movie stars and young writers trying to keep their art and their bodies alive. As Bradbury’s autobiographical hero, a young writer, pounds out his short stories, someone is killing off the older denizens of the tacky city. The writer joins forces with a quirky detective called Elmo Crumley and a faded screen star to investigates the deaths.

58 ) The Anthem Sprinters

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 76
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 72

57 ) Dark They Were and Golden Eyed

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 13
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 64

55 ) George Washington

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 4
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 72

55 ) Quicker Than the Eye

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 52
• Amazon: 40
• LibraryThing: 51

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 twenty-one 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 readers the world over.

54 ) The Other Foot

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 45
• Amazon: 26
• LibraryThing: 70

American blacks, settled on Mars after centuries of abuse on earth, have a chance for revenge when a space ship bearing a white man arrives seeking help in the aftermath of World War III.

53 ) Death Has Lost Its Charm For Me

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 66
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 72

52 ) A Chapbook For Burnt-Out Priests, Rabbis, and Ministers

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 67
• Amazon: 65
• LibraryThing: 6

50 ) The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 37
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 32

50 ) From the Dust Returned

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 53
• Amazon: 43
• LibraryThing: 40

High on a hill by a forked tree, the House beckons its family homeward, and they come–travelers from the lyrical, lush imagination of Ray Bradbury. From the Dust Returned chronicles a community of eternal beings: a mummified matriarch who speaks in dust; a sleeping daughter who lives through the eyes and ears of the creatures she visits in her dreams; an uncle with wings like sea-green sails. And there is also the mortal child Timothy, the foundling son who yearns to be like those he loves: to fly, to sleep in daytime, and to live forever. Instead, his task is to witness the family’s struggle with the startling possibility of its own end.

49 ) Nemo

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 59
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 72

Between 1905 and 1914, American cartoonist Winsor McCay created the comic strip known alternately as Little Nemo in slumberland and In the land of wondrous dreams.

48 ) Now and Forever

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 57
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 45

Two dazzling new novellas from the celebrated author of Fahrenheit 451. Two previously unpublished novellas comprise this astonishing new volume from one of science fiction’s greatest living writers. In the first, ‘Somewhere a Band is Playing’, newsman James Cardiff is lured through poetry and his fascination with a beautiful and enigmatic young woman to Summerton, Arizona. The small town’s childless population hold an extraordinary secret which has been passed on for thousands of years unbeknownst to the rest of human civilization. In the second novella, ‘Leviathan ’99’, the classic tale of Herman Melville’s ‘Moby Dick’ is reborn as an interstellar adventure.

47 ) The Machineries Of Joy

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 76
• Amazon: 14
• LibraryThing: 37

46 ) I Live By the Invisible

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 61
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 64

45 ) Dark Carnival

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 76
• Amazon: 37
• LibraryThing: 12

44 ) It Came From Outer Space

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 30
• Amazon: 54
• LibraryThing: 40

42 ) Green Shadows, White Whale

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 47
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 47

In 1953, the brilliant but terrifying titan of cinema John Huston summons the young writer Ray Bradbury to Ireland. The apprehensive scribe’s quest is to capture on paper the fiercest of all literary beasts — Moby Dick — in the form of a workable screenplay so the great director can begin filming. But from the moment he sets foot on Irish soil, the author embarks on an unexpected odyssey.

42 ) Sunset Ideas For Children’s Rooms Play Yards

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 69
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 53

Creative ideas and suggestions for children’s rooms and outdoor play yards. How to create a friendly, cozy imaginative place where your child and play, work, sleep, or just make believe.

40 ) Fever Dream

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 45
• Amazon: 46
• LibraryThing: 30

40 ) A Memory Of Murder

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 60
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 60

39 ) A Pleasure To Burn

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 35
• Amazon: 63
• LibraryThing: 17

38 ) R Is For Rocket

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 76
• Amazon: 20
• LibraryThing: 18

Seventeen breathtaking stories by the master of the weird and the wonderful, including the spaceage classic, “Frost and Fire”.

36 ) The Golden Apples Of the Sun and Other Stories

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 21
• Amazon: 56
• LibraryThing: 33

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, presented in a new trade edition, are thirty-two of his most famous tales–prime examples of the poignant and mysterious poetry which Bradbury uniquely uncovers in the depths of the human soul, the otherwordly portraits of outrÉ fascination which spring from the canvas of one of the century’s great men of imagination. From a lonely coastal lighthouse to a sixty-million-year-old safary, 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.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.

36 ) Yestermorrow

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 48
• Amazon: 40
• LibraryThing: 22

35 ) Moby Dick

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 11
• Amazon: 26
• LibraryThing: 72

34 ) Long After Midnight

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 29
• Amazon: 46
• LibraryThing: 33

32 ) Something Wicked This Way Comes

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 36
• Amazon: 43
• LibraryThing: 28

A masterpiece of modern Gothic literature, Something Wicked This Way Comes is the memorable story of two boys, James Nightshade and William Halloway, and the evil that grips their small Midwestern town with the arrival of a “dark carnival” one Autumn midnight.

32 ) Somewhere a Band Is Playing

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 42
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 64

29 ) Ghosts Of Forever

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 30
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 72

29 ) Science, Fact and Fiction

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 30
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 72

29 ) Dinosaur Tales

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 39
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 35

Four short stories and two poems featuring one of the author’s great loves: dinosaurs.

27 ) Marionettes, Inc

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 40
• Amazon: 22
• LibraryThing: 40

27 ) Halloween Tree

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 42
• Amazon: 22
• LibraryThing: 38

Special indeed are holiday stories with the right mix of high spirits and subtle mystery to please both adults and children–Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” for example. Or Ray Bradbury’s classic The Halloween Tree. Eight boys set out on a Halloween night and are led into the depths of the past by a tall, mysterious character named Moundshroud. They ride on a black wind to autumn scenes in distant lands and times, where they witness other ways of celebrating this holiday about the dark time of year. Bradbury’s lyrical prose whooshes along with the pell-mell rhythms of children running at night, screaming and laughing, and the reader is carried along by its sheer exuberance. Bradbury’s stories about children are always attended by dread–of change, adulthood, death. The Halloween Tree, while sweeter than his adult literature, is also touched at moments by the cold specter of loss–which is only fitting, of course, for a holiday in honor of the waning of the sun.

25 ) A Sound Of Thunder

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 17
• Amazon: 65
• LibraryThing: 18

Unbelievable as it may seem, Stephen Crane had neither been in battle nor a member of any army when he wrote The Red Badge of Courage.

25 ) When Elephants Last In the Dooryard Bloomed

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 64
• Amazon: 14
• LibraryThing: 22

24 ) Zen the Art Of Writing

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 17
• Amazon: 46
• LibraryThing: 30

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.

23 ) Timeless Stories For Today and Tomorrow

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 26
• Amazon: 40
• LibraryThing: 26

21 ) Masks

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 17
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 64

21 ) A Medicine For Melancholy and Other Stories

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 17
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 36

20 ) Fahrenheit 451

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 34
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 18

19 ) Homecoming

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 21
• Amazon: 46
• LibraryThing: 9

18 ) Switch On the Night

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 24
• Amazon: 22
• LibraryThing: 28

A LONELY LITTLE boy who is scared of the dark sits in his room alone, with only light for company, until a little girl named Dark appears and shows him that light switches don’t just switch off the light—they switch on the night. And to switch on the night is to switch on the stars, the moon, the crickets, and the frogs. With the Dillons’ dreamlike illustrations, Switch on the Night is sure to reassure any child who has felt afraid of the unkown; the story will also impress adult readers with its imaginative approach to understanding that which is different.

17 ) Summer Morning, Summer Night

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 8
• Amazon: 19
• LibraryThing: 46

16 ) Space Opera

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 2
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 1

14 ) The Illustrated Man

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 11
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 26

That The Illustrated Man has remained in print since being published in 1951 is fair testimony to the universal appeal of Ray Bradbury’s work.

14 ) I Sing the Body Electric

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 26
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 39

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 seet of emotionsthat bring strength and mythic resonance to our frail species. Ray Bradbury characters may find themselves anywhere and anywhen. A horrified mother may give birth to a strange blue pyramid. A man may take Abraham Linkoln 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 parrort 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.

13 ) The October Country

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 10
• Amazon: 37
• LibraryThing: 18

Ray Bradbury’s first short story collection is back in print, its chilling encounters with funhouse mirrors, parasitic accident-watchers, and strange poker chips intact. Both sides of Bradbury’s vaunted childhood nostalgia are also on display, in the celebratory “Uncle Einar,” and haunting “The Lake,” the latter a fine elegy to childhood loss.

12 ) Dandelion White

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 21
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 14

World-renowned fantasist Ray Bradbury has on several occasions stepped outside the arenas of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. An unabashed romantic, his first novel in 1957 was basically a love letter to his childhood. (For those who want to undertake an even more evocative look at the dark side of youth, five years later the author would write the chilling classic Something Wicked This Way Comes.

10 ) The Martian Chronicles

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 13
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 16

Written in the 1940s, the chronicles drip with nostalgic atmosphere–shady porches with tinkling pitchers of lemonade, grandfather clocks, chintz-covered sofas. But longing for this comfortable past proves dangerous in every way to Bradbury’s characters–the golden-eyed Martians as well as the humans. Starting in the far-flung future of 1999, expedition after expedition leaves Earth to investigate Mars. The Martians guard their mysteries well, but they are decimated by the diseases that arrive with the rockets. Colonists appear, most with ideas no more lofty than starting a hot-dog stand, and with no respect for the culture they’ve displaced. Bradbury’s quiet exploration of a future that looks so much like the past is sprinkled with lighter material. In “The Silent Towns,” the last man on Mars hears the phone ring and ends up on a comical blind date. But in most of these stories, Bradbury holds up a mirror to humanity that reflects a shameful treatment of “the other,” yielding, time after time, a harvest of loneliness and isolation.

10 ) The Small Assassin

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 26
• Amazon: 22
• LibraryThing: 10

9 ) Match To Flame

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 1
• Amazon: 53
• LibraryThing: 3

8 ) There Will Come Soft Rains

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 7
• Amazon: 43
• LibraryThing: 5

7 ) Twice Twenty-Two

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 6
• Amazon: 37
• LibraryThing: 7

6 ) The Veldt

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 9
• Amazon: 26
• LibraryThing: 13

5 ) S Is For Space

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 16
• Amazon: 14
• LibraryThing: 14

4 ) The Autumn People

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 13
• Amazon: 14
• LibraryThing: 8

3 ) The Stories Of Ray Bradbury

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 3
• Amazon: 20
• LibraryThing: 4

The Stories of Ray Bradbury–a hundred of his best stories, selected by the author himself–is the definitive collection of one of the greatest fantasists the world has ever known. Published in 1980, the volume contains stories selected from the first four decades of Bradbury’s career. There are his unique stories of Mars, which later landed in The Martian Chronicles. There are nostalgic stories of Green Town, Illinois, which Bradbury later brewed into Dandelion Wine.

2 ) Selected From Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 24
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 1

1 ) The Vintage Bradbury

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 4
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 10

As tersely stated on the cover, this is “Ray Bradbury’s own selection of his best stories.” The Vintage Bradbury contains 22 classic stories, plus four chapters excerpted from his first mainstream novel, Dandelion Wine. His career as an author was only about 15 years old when he compiled this volume in 1965 for the prestigious Vintage imprint. Like the vast majority of his collections, it has never been out of print. Bradbury’s own selection of “his best” is also intriguing because most of the stories chosen are from the beginning of his career, and most are quite hauntingly sad. “The Illustrated Man” relates the ultimate fate of the tattooed title character from the novel of the same name.

Ray Bradbury’s Best Books

Ray Bradbury Review Website Bibliography Rankings