The Clockwork Alice

EVERYONE FEARS DEATH—THE GREAT UNWINDING A dark fairy tale retelling. What happened to Alice after the Alice books finished? She got married, had children, became a society hostess—and dreamed of Wonderland. Not that Wonderland has any business knocking at her door. She is happy. And yet, on certain late nights, especially under a full moon, she finds herself standing in front of the painting that the Reverend Charles Dodgson had given her for a wedding-gift, wondering. Magic lives within the painting—she has no doubt of that—the canvas warm under her palm and yielding like flesh. If she presses on its surface, it tries to pull her through. So far, she has resisted. But Wonderland needs her. The mad world had gone entirely wrong, and then wronger still. It runs strictly by rule now, its mad denizens reduced to clockwork servants of an enormous spring-driven machine—one beginning to fail. Wonderland itself is unwinding. Dying. Follow Alice back into the fairy tale that had been created just for her, and which she must now face as an adult. What must she do—and who must she become—to repair its lost madness?