New Releases by Gregory Maguire

**Elphie, the spellbinding prequel to Wicked, is out now** The global bestseller that inspired the hit musical phenomenon. Now a major movie and record-breaking box office sensation. In this classic tale of good and evil, what if we weren't told the whole story? Long before Dorothy follows the yellow brick road and triumphs over the Wicked Witch of the West, a little girl with emerald-green skin is born in the land of Oz. Elphaba grows up to be smart and prickly, a lonely outsider with an extraordinary talent for magic. Arriving at university, she dares to believe she might finally fit in. But Oz isn't the haven she'd dreamed of. Some of its citizens are in grave danger, and Elphaba is determined to protect them from the Wizard's power. And when the world declares her a wicked witch, Elphaba takes matters into her own hands... This is the original novel by Gregory Maguire, first published in 1995. It is a reimagined prequel to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and contains adult content. Fall under the WICKED spell this year 'One of my absolute favourite books! A completely different take on the classic' 'Kept me on the edge of my seat from the second I picked it up' 'I have a penchant for fairytale retellings that are a bit dark and misunderstood villains and this ticked all my boxes' 'This is a real Oz, it makes you believe in it' 'A real joy to sink into a very different world' 'You see the Wicked Witch and Dorothy in a whole new light' 'Funny, sad and unputdownable' 'Honestly, it's better than The Wizard of Oz!' 'Wonderfully written, witty and thought provoking' 'A favourite of mine for many many years'

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.

"Gregory Maguire does for the dark and stormy night what he did for witches in Wicked." - The New York Times Book Review

A terrible storm is raging, and Dinah is huddled by candlelight with her brother, sister, and cousin Gage, who is telling a very unusual tale. It's thestory of What-the-Dickens, a newly hatched orphan creature who finds he has an attraction to teeth, a crush on a cat named McCavity, and a penchant for getting into trouble. One day he happens upon a feisty girl skibberee working as an Agent of Change - trading coins for teeth - and learns of a dutiful tribe of tooth fairies to which he hopes to belong. As his tale unfolds, however, both What-the-Dickens and Dinah come to see that the world is both richer and far less sure than they ever imagined.

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.