RAY BRADBURY'S MAGICAL novel of childhood in a small American town, Dandelion Wine (PS, £20), was first published in 1957. Reading it now is like sipping a glass of that beverage, golden and warm, an old-fashioned summer captured in a bottle. This 50th anniversary edition (also available in a slipcased version at £50) has a new introduction by Stephen King (another specialist in the dreams and nightmares of Americans) and original magazine illustrations from the 1940s and 1950s.

Boys and girls who have been especially good may want to ask Santa for the deluxe edition, limited to 100 copies (£375), signed by Bradbury and King and featuring a second volume, Summer Morning, Summer Night, containing all the additional Greentown stories, and a number of previously unpublished fragments, as well as a scholarly introduction by Joe Eller of Indiana University tracing the evolution of Dandelion Wine out of a planned but unwritten novel.

PS is a small, independent publisher specialising in short fiction and not just from the acknowledged masters. Two years ago, it discovered an unknown writer named Joe Hill, and published his first collection to much praise and many awards. Since then, Hill has been outed as Stephen King's son, and his first novel, Heart-Shaped Box (Gollancz, £9.99/offer £9.49) went to No10 on the New York Times bestseller list.

The novel is good, but the short stories in 20th Century Ghosts (Gollancz, £14.99/£13.49) are even better. The limited first edition now commands an eye-watering price tag from collectors, but this new edition includes an extra story, the World Fantasy Award-winning Voluntary Committal.

Related Internet Links

• Buy the books

Celebrity festive favourites, part two

More Christmas classics from some of Britain's best-loved celebrities

• Celebrity festive favourites

BACKGROUND

• The Times Christmas choice: thrillers

• The Times Christmas choice: science fiction / fantasy

• The Times Christmas choice: sport

• The Times Christmas choice: politics

• The Times Christmas Choice: nostalgia

BACKGROUND

• The Times Christmas choice: food

• The Times Christmas choice: wine

• The Times Christmas choice: poetry

• The Times Christmas Choice: photography

• The Times Christmas Choice: Times writers

In this, as in nearly all of his stories, Hill manages to ground bizarre and terrifying events in solid emotional truth. He combines a weird imagination with psychological acuity, most movingly in the title story (my favourite) and Bobby Conroy Comes Back From the Dead; more frighteningly in My Father's Mask and The Cape.

Short stories are too often overlooked, but this collection displays all the power of this form to thrill and haunt. Not to be missed.

Brasyl (Gollancz, £12.99/£11.69) is the best novel yet by Ian McDonald, who deserves to be much better known. Audacious in scope and style, the story he tells is very human, full of vividly realised characters. It is a magical alternative history of Brazil and a mind-expanding intellectual adventure in prose bordering on the hallucinogenic.

Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End (Tor, £6.99/£6.64) will appeal to iPhone and internet addicts. A convincing vision of a future near enough to touch — people wearing their computers, able to be in more than one place at a time, cured of Alzheimer's and other infirmities — it won this year's Hugo Award.

Times Recommends

• The Sunday Times 100 best holiday reads
• What will we be reading this summer: the booksellers predict
• Literary festivals: a survivor’s guide