New Wicked Sequel Set for Release in Two Weeks

For more than 30 years, Gregory Maguire’s Wicked has offered readers a very different way to experience the wonderful Land of Oz. First published in 1995, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West reimagined L. Frank Baum’s classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from the perspective of Elphaba, turning the supposedly wicked witch into a more complicated figure. The book eventually became the foundation for the hugely successful Broadway musical that premiered in 2003 and helped turn Elphaba and Glinda into two of the most recognizable characters in modern musical theater.

The story has only grown more popular in the years since, expanding well beyond Maguire’s original novel and transforming the Broadway musical into a two-part movie adaptation starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. Maguire has continued his story of Oz through additional books, including Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, and Out of Oz. In 2026, he returned to the world with Elphie: A Wicked Childhood, a novel exploring the early life of the character who would eventually become the Wicked Witch of the West.

Gregory Maguire also wrote Galinda: A Charmed Childhood to focus on the other half of Wicked’s central friendship. The new book goes back even further to explore the childhood of the character who readers first meet as Galinda Upland before she eventually becomes the Good Witch. Rather than continuing the story after Wicked, the novel digs into the roots of one of Oz’s most recognizable figures.

What is the Galinda: A Charmed Childhood story?

Just as Elphie: A Wicked Childhood pulled the curtain back on the Wicked Witch’s adolescence, Galinda: A Charmed Childhood serves as an origin story for the character better known as Glinda the Good Witch. As Maguire’s novel establishes, she was once simply Galinda long before she became Elphaba’s popular roommate at Shiz University or floated into Oz in her famous bubble.

The book chronicles her childhood, growing up as the youngest of four children in a once-noble family that has fallen on hard times. She is pampered in some ways and overlooked in others, with much of her early life revolving around her family, social standing, and her talent for dancing.

Beneath the cushioned surface of Galinda’s childhood life lie social tensions she cannot yet fully comprehend. Her father becomes entangled in conflicts with local merchants, while Galinda remains focused on the possibility that her grace and charm might help her build a better life for herself. Readers see the character before the confidence, popularity, and carefully constructed image of the Good Witch have fully taken shape.

Like Wicked itself, the new book is rooted in Maguire’s long-running revisionist take on Baum’s Oz. Galinda asks what major events shaped the girl who would eventually become one of its most famous witches.

When is the Galinda: A Charmed Childhood release date?

Galinda: A Charmed Childhood officially arrives Sept. 29, 2026. The novel is being published by William Morrow in the United States, with editions also scheduled to release internationally. It runs 272 pages and is available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook formats across a range of retailers, including Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

For anyone who came to Wicked through the Broadway musical or its recent movies, Galinda offers another trip back into Maguire’s much stranger, more complicated version of Oz.

Source: Polygon