UNITED STATES AUTHOR · FICTION · CHILDREN
Gregory Maguire
Also known as: maguire-gregory, GREGORY MAGUIRE
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West is a 1995 dark fantasy novel by American writer Gregory Maguire, with illustrations by Douglas Smith. It is the first novel in The Wicked Years series, and was followed by Son of a Witch (September 2005), A Lion Among Men (October 2008), and Out of Oz (November 2011), plus a number of short stories since 2012. Wicked is a cynical, adult-oriented revision of the characters and setting of L. Frank Baum's 1900 children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, along with its sequels and 1939 film adaptation. The novel is presented as a biography of the Wicked Witch of the West, here given the name Elphaba Thropp. The book follows Elphaba from her birth through her social ostracism, school years, radicalization, and final days.
The morning began, as did so many of their mornings, with an argument.
— from Lost
Most acclaimed
Mirror, Mirror
E-Book Extra: “Little Snow-White” by the Brothers Grimm (read the original version of the classic fairy tale)Think you know who's the fairest of them all? Think again. Bestselling re-imaginer of classic fairy tales sets the Snow White story in Renaissance Italy, where the madly vain Lucrezia Borgia plots a dire fate for seven-year-old Bianca de Nevada (a.k.a. Snow White).A lyrical work of stunning creative vision, Mirror Mirror is set in Renaissance Italy, where Gregory Maguire draws a connection between the poison apple in the original Snow White story and the Borgia family's well-known appetite for poisoning its foes.In Mirror Mirror Snow White is called Bianca de Nevada. She is born on a farm in Tuscany in 1495, and when she is seven, her father is ordered by the duplicitous Cesare Borgia to go on a quest to reclaim the relic of the original Tree of Knowledge, a branch bearing three living apples that are thousands of years old. Bianca is left in the care of her father's farm staff and the beautiful -- and madly vain -- Lucrecia Borgia, Cesare's sister. But Lucrecia becomes jealous of her lecherous brother's interest in the growing child and plots a dire fate for Bianca in the woods below the farm. There Bianca finds herself in the home of seven dwarves -- the creators of the magic mirror -- who await the return of their brother, the eighth dwarf, long gone on a quest of his own.In the evocative style of Maguire's earlier novels, Mirror Mirror is a fresh, compelling take on a beloved classic tale.
After Alice
When Alice toppled down the rabbit-hole 150 years ago, she found a Wonderland as rife with inconsistent rules and abrasive egos as the world she left behind. But what of that world? How did 1860s Oxford react to Alice's disappearance? Ada, a friend of Alice's mentioned briefly in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, is off to visit her friend, but arrives a moment too late--and tumbles down the rabbit-hole herself. Ada brings to Wonderland her own imperfect apprehension of cause and effect as she embarks on an odyssey to find Alice and see her safely home from this surreal world below the world--
Lost
Two bestselling novels in one volume! Jane Whittaker finds herself on a downtown street, her pockets stuffed with a large number of crisp $100 bills, the front of her dress soaked with blood. She has no idea who she is. After a terrifying night of hiding, Jane ends up in hospital. There, while undergoing a battery of medical tests, she is recognized by one of the nurses. Soon her husband comes to claim her. He is every woman's dream: popular, respected, wealthy, a tall blond doctor. He takes Jane home and vows to cure her with loving care and modern medicine. But Jane doesn't get any better. The medication seems to be turning her into a zombie, and she begins to feel that her private nurse is holding prisoner in her own home. Can Jane remember her past in time...in time to stop whatever it is that is happening to her, whatever made her lose her memory in the first place, whatever is trying to destroy her and her family? Terry Painter enjoys her quiet life in tranquil Delray, Florida, where the single, forty-year-old nurse lives alone in the house she inherited from her mother. When young, vibrant Alison Simms rents the cottage on her property, the two women strike up a fast friendship-and Terry is swept into a fantastic new life: dinners out, shopping, makeovers, even flirting with the handsome son of one of her elderly patients. But nothing about her newfound companion is as it appears, as Terry discovers when Alison's closely guarded past comes to light. Now Terry is locked into a race to reclaim her own life-before she opens the door any further to the stranger she thought she knew...