Countdown to Halloween: By the pricking of my thumbs...

“First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.”Indeed. So begins Ray Bradbury's iconic 1962 dark fantasy novel. Hard as it may be to believe, it's true that I've never read it! In the early '90s I made my way through a handful of Bradbury's other classics - Martian Chronicles, Dandelion Wine, Illustrated Man, etc. - but Wicked has simply sat on my shelf uncracked and unloved. Every