A Lion Among Men

We return to Oz in this much awaited third book of the Wicked Years, but this time we see it through the eyes of the Cowardly Lion—the little cub who Elphaba once stood up for in Wicked. An irritable oracle by the name of Yackle is ready to die as a civil war approaches. Just before her last hour, a mysterious persona known only as Brrr, the Cowardly Lion, shows there in quest of knowledge on Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West. Yackle expects her own answers in exchange for cash. Brrr gives up telling his tale; he was abandoned as a cub, his early recollections are hazy and undefined, and he doesn't see a Yellow Brick Road in his life. The story of A Lion Among Men follows a wit-warped by the advancing forces of the Emerald City. Gregory Maguire's latest book is crafted with the same compassion and force that have made his previous works modern masterpieces, serving as both a portrait of a would-be survivor and a broad view of a society gone insane with panic attacks.