Did the world really need a novel-length expansion of Ray Bradbury's classic 1946 short story "Homecoming," any more than it needed the novel-length expansion of Isaac Asimov's novella "The Ugly Little Boy"? Probably not, but given that it was destined to get one anyway, it could do worse than the breezy, feather-light From The Dust Returned. The brief book knits together six of Bradbury's stories about a family of vague spooks, ghosts, phantasms, and freaks, and adds a framework that includes a few character studies, a smattering of family history, a bit of subtle polemic on the cynicism of the modern age, and an ultimate conclusion. As is often the case with Bradbury's work, Dust is more a lengthy prose poem than a novel; it rushes breathlessly through tangled metaphors and endless impressionistic descriptions, punctuated with evocative, if not necessarily sensible, word-conglomerations like "when every carpet desired invisible footfalls and the water pump on the back stoop inhaled, sucking vile liquors toward a surface abandoned because of the possible upchuck of nightmares… there was Anuba. Clothed in a fine pelt of arrogance, her quiet engine quieter, centuries before limousines." Bradbury's original six stories, published from 1946 through 1988, have a tendency toward O. Henry twists, but the rest of the material is only grammatically twisted, piled high with adjectives, fragments, unexpected conflations, and exultant punctuation. (Bradbury may be the only writer in America who can pack his prose with exclamation points without looking juvenile.) The book never quite reaches higher than the stellar "Homecoming," in which a young boy named Timothy, a normal child adopted into a family of vampires, werewolves, mummies, and incomprehensible shifting shadows, aches to drink blood and sleep through the day like everyone else. Other high points include "West Of October," which follows four energetic young Family members who end up trapped in the head of a 4,000-year-old ancestor after their bodies are destroyed while their minds are out wandering, and "On The Orient North," in which an aging nurse rescues an aging ghost wounded by modern skepticism. Some of the rest seems like mere filler, but it's enthusiastic filler, and the particular energy of Bradbury's slippery, adept enthusiasm is generally catching. From The Dust Returned isn't going to shatter worlds or change lives, but it's a decent ghost story, and a fair addition to an October evening alone in front of a fireplace.