“A brilliant, perceptive, and deeply moving fable.” — Boston Sunday Globe   Publishers Weekly calls Gregory Maguire’s Lost “a deftly written, compulsively readable modern-day ghost story.” Brilliantly weaving together the literary threads of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan , Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and the Jack the Ripper stories, the bestselling author of The Wicked Years canon creates a captivating fairy tale for the modern world. With Lost, Maguire—who re-imagined a darker, more dangerous Oz, and inspired the creation of the Tony Award-winning Broadway blockbuster Wicked —delivers a haunting tale of shadows and phantoms and things going bump in the night, confirming his reputation as “one of contemporary fiction’s most assured myth-makers” ( Kirkus Reviews ). “A deftly written, compulsively readable modern-day ghost story that easily elicits suspension of disbelief.” - Publishers Weekly “A potent ghost story. . . .Maguire’s free-ranging, high-energy imagination is a wonder to behold.” - Kirkus Reviews Winifred Rudge, a bemused writer struggling to get beyond the runaway success of her mass-market astrology book, travels to London to jump-start her new novel about a woman who is being haunted by the ghost of Jack the Ripper. Upon her arrival, she finds that her stepcousin and old friend John Comestor has disappeared, and a ghostly presence seems to have taken over his home. Is the spirit Winnie's great-great-grandfather, who, family legend claims, was Charles Dickens's childhood inspiration for Ebenezer Scrooge? Could it be the ghostly remains of Jack the Ripper? Or a phantasm derived from a more arcane and insidious origin? Winnie begins to investigate and finds herself the unwilling audience for a drama of specters and shades—some from her family's peculiar history and some from her own unvanquished past. In the spirit of A. S. Byatt's Possession, with dark echoing overtones of A Christmas Carol, Lost presents a rich fictional world that will enrapture its readers. Gregory Maguire is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Wicked Years, a series that includes Wicked ―the beloved classic that is the basis for the blockbuster Tony Award–winning Broadway musical of the same name and the major motion pictures― Son of a Witch , A Lion Among Men , and Out of Oz . His series Another Day continues the story of Oz with The Brides of Maracoor , The Oracle of Maracoor , and The Witch of Maracoor , and his other novels include A Wild Winter Swan , Hiddensee , After Alice , Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister , Lost , and Mirror Mirror . Some of his novels for children include Cress Watercress , Leaping Beauty , and Egg & Spoon , winner of a Boston Globe–Horn Book Award Honor. He lives in New England and France. Lost By Maguire, Gregory ReganBooks Copyright ©2004 Gregory Maguire All right reserved. ISBN: 0060988649 Chapter One Somebody Else in the Vehicle said the attorney-type into his cell phone. He wiped the wet from his face. "There must be. It's in the carpool lane." He listened, squinting, and motioned to Winnie: Stop. Don't open the car door yet. Already, other drivers were slowing down to rubberneck. "Where are we, Braintree, Quincy? On 93 north, anyway, a half mile beyond the junction with 128. Yes, I know enough not to move anyone, but I'm telling you, you'll have a hell of a time getting an ambulance through, what with rush hour -- there'll be a backup a mile long before you know it." He listened again. Then, "Right. I'll look. Two or more, maybe." Returning from a few quiet days on Cape Cod, Winifred Rudge had missed her turnoff west and gotten stuck on the JFK toward Boston. Woolgathering, nail biting, something. Focus was a problem. Late for her appointment, she'd considered the odds: in this weather, what were her chances of being ticketed for violating the diamond lane's two-riders-or-more rule? Limited. She'd risked it. So she'd been at the right place on the downgrade to see the whole thing, despite the poor visibility. She'd watched the top third of a white pine snap in the high winds. Even from a half mile away, she'd noticed how the wood flesh had sprung out in diagonal striations, like nougat against rain-blackened bark. The crown of the tree twisted, then tilted. The wind had caught under the tree's parasol limbs and carried it across three lanes of slow-moving traffic, flinging it onto the hood and the roof of a northbound Subaru in the carpool lane. The driver of the Subaru, four cars ahead of Winnie, had braked too hard and hydroplaned left against the Jersey barriers. The evasive action hadn't helped. Winnie had managed to tamp her brakes and avoid adding to the collection of crumpled fenders and popped hoods. She had been the first out in the rain, the first to start poking through dark rafts of pine needles. Mr. Useful Cell Phone was next, having emerged from some vehicle behind her. He carried a ridiculous o