The Seven Wicked First

A James Patterson Presents Novel From the #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Stalking Jack the Ripper series comes a new blockbuster series... Two sisters.One brutal murder. A quest for vengeance that will unleash Hell itself... And an intoxicating romance. Emilia and her twin sister Vittoria are streghe -- witches who live secretly among humans, avoiding notice and persecution. One night, Vittoria misses dinner service at the family's renowned Sicilian restaurant. Emilia soon finds the body of her beloved twin...desecrated beyond belief. Devastated, Emilia sets out to find her sister's killer and to seek vengeance at any cost-even if it means using dark magic that's been long forbidden. Then Emilia meets Wrath, one of the Wicked-princes of Hell she has been warned against in tales since she was a child. Wrath claims to be on Emilia's side, tasked by his master with solving the series of women's murders on the island. But when it comes to the Wicked, nothing is as it seems...

"That's just the First," Caleb said, pausing to worry at his lower lip. "And it's only one of seven, Seven Wicked; we can't destroy any of the others until we destroy the First."When reincarnated goddess, Eevee Marx, sees the necklace at her local thrift store, she just has to have it. But Eevee has no idea that when she drapes the delicate, silver links over her fingers, she is continuing a legend her spirit had started centuries ago. That when she unhooks the tiny clasp and lays the black and silver pendant against her chest, she will spend the night of her seventeenth birthday holding the dying body of the boy she loves.The Seven Wicked have been sleeping, preparing for Eevee to touch the necklace and reawaken the powers inside of her. Now, the only thing that stands between them is Caleb, the golden haired boy who will sacrifice himself to save her.

Bob Dylan’s abrupt abandonment of overtly political songwriting in the mid-1960s caused an uproar among critics and fans. In Wicked Messenger, acclaimed cultural-political commentator Mike Marqusee advances the new thesis that Dylan did not drop politics from his songs but changed the manner of his critique to address the changing political and cultural climate and, more importantly, his own evolving aesthetic. Wicked Messenger is also a riveting political history of the United States in the 1960s. Tracing the development of the decade’s political and cultural dissent movements, Marqusee shows how their twists and turns were anticipated in the poetic aesthetic—anarchic, unaccountable, contradictory, punk— of Dylan's mid-sixties albums, as well as in his recent artistic ventures in Chronicles, Vol. I and Masked and Anonymous. Dylan’s anguished, self-obsessed, prickly artistic evolution, Marqusee asserts, was a deeply creative response to a deeply disturbing situation. "He can no longer tell the story straight," Marqusee concludes, "because any story told straight is a false one."

Maureen Swanson is the scourge of the neighborhood. At age nine, she already has a reputation as a hard slapper, a loud laugher, a liar, and a stay-after-schooler. The other kids call her Stinky. So sometimes when Maureen passes the crumbling (and haunted?) Messerman mansion, she imagines that she is Maureen Messerman–rich, privileged, and powerful. Then she finds a way into the forbidden, boarded-up house. In the hall are portraits of seven young women wearing elaborate gowns and haughty expressions. Maureen has something scathing to say to each one, but then she notices that the figures seem to have shifted in their frames. So she reaches out her finger to touch the paint–just to make sure–and touches . . . silk! These seven daughters of privilege are colder and meaner than Maureen ever thought to be. They are wicked, wicked ladies, and Maureen has something they want. . . .

The Sunday Times bestseller. One sister. Two sinful princes. Infinite deception with a side of revenge . . . Welcome to Hell. From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Kerri Maniscalco comes the sizzling and sweepingly romantic sequel to Kingdom of the Wicked. With the enigmatic Prince of Wrath at her side, Emilia sold her soul to become Queen of the Wicked and travelled to the Seven Circles to fulfil her vow of avenging her beloved sister. But the first rule in the court of the Wicked? Trust no one. And it quickly becomes clear that nothing in Hell is what it seems. Even Wrath, her onetime ally, may be keeping secrets about his true nature. But that suits Emilia just fine - she's got secrets of her own. Faced with backstabbing courtiers, princes who delight in fear, luxurious palaces, dazzling galas, and conflicting clues about what truly happened to her sister, Emilia finds herself on a mission to unlock the mysteries of her own past and uncover the answers she craves. As long as her sins don't catch up to her first . . . *** PRAISE FOR KERRI MANISCALCO *** 'A delicious and intoxicating new fantasy by a master of murder and mayhem' Elizabeth Lim, author of Spin the Dawn 'An intoxicating, tightly plotted feast for the senses' Kirkus 'A fast-paced adventure steeped in a luscious and dark world' Chloe Gong, NYT bestselling author of These Violent Delights

Nine-year-old Maureen is the terror of her neighborhood until the day she begins to explore an old deserted estate and encounters a leprechaun and seven strange ladies.

The New York Times bestseller and basis for the Tony-winning hit musical, soon to be a major motion picture starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande With millions of copies in print around the world, Gregory Maguire’s Wicked is established not only as a commentary on our time but as a novel to revisit for years to come. Wicked relishes the inspired inventions of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, while playing sleight of hand with our collective memories of the 1939 MGM film starring Margaret Hamilton (and Judy Garland). In this fast-paced, fantastically real, and supremely entertaining novel, Maguire has populated the largely unknown world of Oz with the power of his own imagination. Years before Dorothy and her dog crash-land, another little girl makes her presence known in Oz. This girl, Elphaba, is born with emerald-green skin—no easy burden in a land as mean and poor as Oz, where superstition and magic are not strong enough to explain or overcome the natural disasters of flood and famine. Still, Elphaba is smart, and by the time she enters Shiz University, she becomes a member of a charmed circle of Oz’s most promising young citizens. But Elphaba’s Oz is no utopia. The Wizard’s secret police are everywhere. Animals—those creatures with voices, souls, and minds—are threatened with exile. Young Elphaba, green and wild and misunderstood, is determined to protect the Animals—even if it means combating the mysterious Wizard, even if it means risking her single chance at romance. Ever wiser in guilt and sorrow, she can find herself grateful when the world declares her a witch. And she can even make herself glad for that young girl from Kansas. Recognized as an iconoclastic tour de force on its initial publication, the novel has inspired the blockbuster musical of the same name—one of the longest-running plays in Broadway history. Popular, indeed. But while the novel’s distant cousins hail from the traditions of magical realism, mythopoeic fantasy, and sprawling nineteenth-century sagas of moral urgency, Maguire’s Wicked is as unique as its green-skinned witch.

The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.