The Red Queen

The author of Alice takes readers back down the rabbit hole to a dark, twisted, and fascinating world based on the works of Lewis Carroll... The land outside of the Old City was supposed to be green, lush, hopeful. A place where Alice could finally rest, no longer the plaything of the Rabbit, the pawn of Cheshire, or the prey of the Jabberwocky. But the verdant fields are nothing but ash--and hope is nowhere to be found. Still, Alice and Hatcher are on a mission to find his daughter, a quest they will not forsake even as it takes them deep into the clutches of the mad White Queen and her goblin or into the realm of the twisted and cruel Black King. The pieces are set and the game has already begun. Each move brings Alice closer to her destiny. But, to win, she will need to harness her newfound abilities and ally herself with someone even more powerful--the mysterious and vengeful Red Queen...

Praise for Red Queen

"Alice's ongoing struggle is to distinguish reality from illusion, and Henry excels in mingling the two for the reader as well as her characters."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Henry continues to shine as she expands upon the vision Lewis Carroll first dreamed, adding her own voice and imagination to this timeless classic." —RT Book Reviews

"If it seems too good to be true, in Henry's world, it always is...Given Henry's penchant for surprise, don't think you already know how it ends."—The Oklahoman

Praise for Alice
 
“Careful, this white rabbit will lead you on a psychotic journey through the bowels of magic and madness. I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed the ride.”—Brom, author of The Child Thief
 
“I loved falling down the rabbit hole with this dark, gritty tale. A unique spin on a classic and one wild ride!”—Gena Showalter, New York Times bestselling author of Alice in Zombieland
 
“A dark, delightfully disturbing fall down a rabbit hole of madness and mystery. This is not your mamma’s Alice…If you’re looking for a book that will make you feel like you were just on a bender with the blue caterpillar, I highly recommend Alice.”—R.S. Belcher, author of *Nightwise

"Christina Henry’s *Alice takes the darker elements of Lewis Carroll’s original, amplifies Tim Burton’s cinematic reimagining of the story, and adds a layer of grotesquery from her own alarmingly fecund imagination to produce a novel that reads like a Jacobean revenge drama crossed with a slasher movie."—The Guardian (UK)*

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  “A horrifying fantasy that will have you reexamining your love for this childhood favorite. Smooth velvety prose blends well with the deliciously complex characters and interesting storyline…A world that is nothing like Lewis Carroll ever imagined.”—RT Book Reviews (top pick)
   
  “Hands down one of the most imaginative and entertaining books I’ve read all year.”—Vampire Book Club
   
  “A dark and deeply disturbing revisit of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Who wouldn’t like it?”—Kirkus Reviews

“Henry retains all the surreality of Carroll’s tale but makes it even darker, leading readers down a scarier rabbit hole and into a city that’s fantastical, scary and frankly more satisfying than Carroll’s original…The writing is brisk, the story compulsive…A fun, chilling, exciting, magical read.”—The Oklahoman

Auteur
Christina Henry is the author of The Mermaid, Lost Boy, Alice, Red Queen, and the national bestselling Black Wings series featuring Agent of Death Madeline Black and her popcorn-loving gargoyle, Beezle.

Résumé
The author of Alice takes readers back down the rabbit hole to a dark, twisted, and fascinating world based on the works of Lewis Carroll...
 
The land outside of the Old City was supposed to be green, lush, hopeful. A place where Alice could finally rest, no longer the plaything of the Rabbit, the pawn of Cheshire, or the prey of the Jabberwocky. But the verdant fields are nothing but ash—and hope is nowhere to be found.
 
Still, Alice and Hatcher are on a mission to find his daughter, a quest they will not forsake even as it takes them deep into the clutches of the mad White Queen and her goblin or into the realm of the twisted and cruel Black King.
 
The pieces are set and the game has already begun. Each move brings Alice closer to her destiny. But, to win, she will need to harness her newfound abilities and ally herself with someone even more powerful—the mysterious and vengeful Red Queen...

Échantillon de lecture
This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof
Copyright © 2016 Christina Henry

Red Queen excerpt

 

 

Prologue

An
Interlude
in the
Old City

In a City where everything was grey and fog-covered and monsters lurked behind every echoing footfall, there was a little man who collected stories. He sat in a parlor covered in roses and this little man was small and neat, his head covered in golden-brown ringlets and his eyes bright and green like a rose’s leaves. He wore a velvet suit of rose red and he urged a cup of tea on his visitor, a wide-eyed girl who looked about her in wonder. She was not certain how she’d gotten here, only that this strange little man had helped her when she thought she was lost.

“Do you like stories?” the little man asked.

He was called Cheshire, and the girl thought that was a very odd name, though this room and his cottage were very pretty.

“Yes,” she said. She was very young still, and did not know yet what Cheshire had saved her from when he came upon her wandering in the streets near his cottage. She was lucky, more than lucky, that it was he who found her.

“I like stories too,” Cheshire said. “I collect them. I like this story because I have a part to play in it—a small part, to be sure, but a part nonetheless.

“Once, there was a girl called Alice, and she lived in the New City, where everything is shining and beautiful and fair. But Alice was a curious girl with a curious talent. She was a Magician. Do you know what a Magician is?”

The girl shook her head. “But I have heard of them. They could do wonders but the ministers drove all the Magicians out of the City long ago.”

“Well,” Cheshire said, and winked. “They thought they did, but a few Magicians remained. And Alice was one of them, though she did not know it yet.

“She had magic, and because of that she was vulnerable, and a girl who was supposed to be Alice’s friend sold her for money to a very bad man called the Rabbit.”

“He was a rabbit?” the girl asked, confused.

“Not really, though he had rabbit ears on a man’s body,” Cheshire said. “The Rabbit hurt Alice, and wanted to hurt her more, wanted to sell her to a man called the Walrus who ate girls for their magic.”

The wide-eyed girl put her cup of tea on Cheshire’s rose-covered table and stared. “Ate? Like really eat?”

“Oh, yes, my dear,” Cheshire said. “He ate them all up in his belly. But Alice was quick and clever and she got away from the Rabbit before he could feed her to the Walrus. The Rabbit marked Alice, though, marked her with a long scar on her face to say she was his. My resourceful Alice marked him too—she took his eye out.

“But little Alice, she was broken and sad and confused, and her parents locked her away in a hospital for confused people. There she met a madm…