A Lion Among Men
"Hardly more than a kitten . . . I had thought to call it Prrr, but it shivers more often than it purrs, so I call it Brrr instead."
—From Wicked
Since Wicked was first published in 1995, millions of readers have discovered Gregory Maguire's fantastically encyclopedic Oz, a world filled with characters both familiar and new, darkly conceived and daringly reimagined. In the much-anticipated third volume of the Wicked Years, we return to Oz, seen now through the eyes of the Cowardly Lion—the once tiny cub defended by Elphaba in Wicked.
While civil war looms in Oz, a tetchy oracle named Yackle prepares for death. Before her final hour, an enigmatic figure known as Brrr—the Cowardly Lion—arrives searching for information about Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West. As payment, Yackle, who hovered on the sidelines of Elphaba's life, demands some answers of her own.
Brrr surrenders his story to the ailing maunt: Abandoned as a cub, his earliest memories are gluey hazes, and his path from infancy in the Great Gillikin Forest is no Yellow Brick Road. Seeking to redress an early mistake, he trudges through a swamp of ghosts, becomes implicated in a massacre of trolls, and falls in love with a forbidding Cat princess. In the wake of laws that oppress talking Animals, he avoids a jail sentence by agreeing to serve as a lackey to the war-mongering Emperor of Oz.
A Lion Among Men chronicles a battle of wits hastened by the Emerald City's approaching armies. What does the Lion know of the whereabouts of the Witch's boy, Liir? What can Yackle reveal about the auguries of the Clock of the Time Dragon? And what of the Grimmerie, the magic book that vanished as quickly as Elphaba? Is destiny ever arbitrary? Can those tarnished by infamy escape their sobriquets—cowardly, wicked, brainless, criminally earnest—to claim their own histories, to live honorably within their own skins before they're skinned alive?
At once a portrait of a would-be survivor and a panoramic glimpse of a world gone shrill with war fever, Gregory Maguire's new novel is written with the sympathy and power that have made his books contemporary classics.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY DEC 22, 2008
Always outspoken (and so-called "Dr."), Denis Leary returns with this hilarious look at sucking; why we suck, how not to suck and how to help others who suck become suck free. Pulling no punches, Leary storms his way through everything from skinny jeans being for skinny people to vegetarians, and never fails to make listeners laugh out loud. Reading in his trademark self-deprecating and hard-nosed manner, Leary plows through his book at such a strong and commanding speed that listeners will think his well-polished rants are off-the-cuff. Leary is almost performing stand-up; his tone is so unrelenting and unabashed that listeners will beg for more. A Viking hardcover (Reviews, Sept. 15).
htbxk , 10/17/2017
You better fuou ouapheresis but uhh he's Not of
More Books by Gregory Maguire
Son of a Witch
Out of Oz
After Alice
Egg and Spoon