Each title in The Applause Libretto Library Series presents a Broadway musical with fresh packaging in a 6 x 9 trade paperback format. Each Complete Book and Lyrics is approved by the writers and attractively designed with color photo inserts from the Broadway production. All titles include introduction and foreword by renowned Broadway musical experts. Long before Dorothy dropped in, two other girls meet in the Land of Oz. One, born with emerald green skin, is smart, fiery, and misunderstood. The other is beautiful, ambitious, and very popular. The story of how these two unlikely friends end up as the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch makes for the most spellbinding new musical in years.

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.

When an insect-borne plague begins to envelop the world, three sixteen-year-olds struggle to survive amongst the healthy “trues” and the infected “wickeds” in this gripping dystopian tale from the author of The Winter Place. A plague, called Wickedness, is pulsing through the world; and in its wake, it’s dividing the population into thirds: The WICKED: Already infected by the droves of Singers, the ultraviolet mosquito-like insects who carry the plague, the Wicked roam the world freely. They don’t want for much—only to maim and dismember you. But don’t worry: They always ask politely first. The TRUE: The True live in contained, isolated communities. They’re the lucky ones; they found safety from the Singers. And while the threat of the Wicked may not be eliminated, for the True, the threat has certainly been contained… The VEXED: The Vexed are the truly fortunate ones—they survived the sting of the Singers, leaving them immune. But they’re far from safe. The Vexed hold the key to a cure, and there are those who will do anything to get it. In this brilliantly realized novel, three teens—Astrid, Hank, and Natalie—start to realize that the divisions of their world aren’t as clear as they seem, and are forced to question what being wicked truly means.

The long-anticipated sequel to the million-copy bestselling novel Wicked Ten years after the publication of Wicked, beloved novelist Gregory Maguire returns at last to the land of Oz. There he introduces us to Liir, an adolescent boy last seen hiding in the shadows of the castle after Dorothy did in the Witch. Bruised, comatose, and left for dead in a gully, Liir is shattered in spirit as well as in form. But he is tended at the Cloister of Saint Glinda by the silent novice called Candle, who wills him back to life with her musical gifts. What dark force left Liir in this condition? Is he really Elphaba's son? He has her broom and her cape -- but what of her powers? Can he find his supposed half-sister, Nor, last seen in the forbidding prison, Southstairs? Can he fulfill the last wishes of a dying princess? In an Oz that, since the Wizard's departure, is under new and dangerous management, can Liir keep his head down long enough to grow up? For the countless fans who have been dazzled and entranced by Maguire's Oz, Son of a Witch is the rich reward they have awaited so long.

When Donald Gardner's parents tell him they'll be taking an exciting road trip through Kansas, he openly cringes. He is sure it will be a boring summer vacation. But at one of their final roadside stops on the way home, they are approached by a poor woman offering to sell a curious item-an antique silver shoe. While Donald's mother is initially reluctant, she is ultimately smitten with the shoe and buys it. Donald is skeptical that the shoe is anything more than a relic, but when the new school year starts, he brings it in for show-and-tell, attempting to impress his classmates. His friends liken it to something out of The Wizard of Oz, and his teacher agrees the idea is not far-fetched considering author L. Frank Baum wrote about "silver shoes," not ruby slippers, which were strictly in the movie. Yet when he accepts a dare from his two best buddies to try it on, frightening and incredible things begin to happen. Strange animals cry out in the night. Dark, shadowy shapes lurk in distant corners. Scratching sounds are heard just outside his bedroom window. And when he meets George Clarke, a reclusive man who has been in hiding and on the run for many years, Donald finds out there is a lot more to Baum's story than he thinks. Join Donald as he unravels Baum's earth-shattering secret in ... Silver Shoes.* * Kansas Notable Book award-winner for 2010, from the Kansas Center for the Book and the State Library of Kansas.

When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious Witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? Gregory Maguire has created a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again.

Western Kentucky has always had a dark side, despite being the "Birthplace of Bluegrass Music." Mary James Trotter, an arrested moonshine-selling grandma, remarked to a judge that she "simply had to sell a little liquor now and then to take care of my four grandchildren." Rod Ferrell led a bloodsucking vampire cult in Murray, Kentucky, and traumatized parents of the 1990s. In the early morning of July 13, 1928, at the "Castle on the Cumberland," seven men were put to death in Kentucky's deadliest night of state-sponsored executions. Join award-winning author Richard Parker as he takes you on a journey through fifteen of Western Kentucky's most nefarious people, places and events.