As Dorothy awakes in Oz there’s no sunshine in Munchkin country, just a twisted race enslaved by the Eastern witch, and a crooked path of yellow bricks she has to take to the mysterious Emerald City, a place ridden with sinister secrets.

To get home the orphan girl treks the magical land, sometimes beautiful though often deadly, seeking help from the great wizard of Oz. The young girl struggles through a vast land of new sights, unfamiliar villages, and endures the dark forest, finding strange friends along her way. Cautiously trusting a peculiar scarecrow, he accompanies Dorothy through Oz, finding a tragic tin-man on their travels, and the cowardly lion; a victim to Mr Jack’s infernal carnival. The animal’s only hope is to be saved by Dorothy and her friends, but the ringleader and his obscure show have other plans for them.

Dorothy’s enchanting journey takes her through new, peculiar and amazing countries as Oz unveils itself. The strange friends must fight to overcome the rivers of mist, the deadly poppy fields, and beyond; whilst Kalidahs, Hammerheads and other macabre creatures stand in their way…and if they reach the Emerald City, they my find more than they bargained for.

To get back to Kansas the young girl must survive the dangers of Oz, find the mysterious great wizard, and most of all, avoid the dead-lands of the West, where the evil witch Outika breeds her carnivorous pets, and watches the strange friends’ every move. This isn’t the Oz you know, and Dorothy may never leave.

Based on the classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum

Release Notes

Available now through all major booksellers, including Amazon, Waterstones, and Fastprint, with limited signed editions and prints available through the novel’s official website: www.darkersideofoz.com.

Author’s Bio

Scott Stanford was born in a small Welsh village in 1984, and after studying Milton’s ’paradise lost’, alongside reading Bret Easton Ellis’s ‘American psycho’ started writing himself. His works spanned from epic poems to film, and amidst a number of feature scripts and other projects came a debut novel. Since then he’s been working as a novelist, and even turned down working with Samuel L. Jackson in the process.

Now releasing his fourth novel Dorothy: The Darker Side of Oz Scott currently lives in Manchester with a curious Harlequin rabbit called Dexter, and Jimmy Joyce (A loveable Labrador).

Author’s Notes

“Dorothy – The Darker Side of Oz is an original novel that runs parallel to Baum’s The wonderful wizard of oz, and in writing it I wanted to make it new and exciting whilst keeping to the essence of Baum’s classic. Though this tale is deeper, and with more insight into characters and focus on the amazing journey that Dorothy takes to get home. With the characters I wanted to give them all a sense of depth and individuality, making them more than just cogs behind Dorothy. For example the ‘cowardly lion’ is very much the courageless creature Baum intended, though opposed to a little girl finding him along her path and taking the large lion as her companion without hesitation, I wanted to give Dorothy a realistic reaction to the creature (confusion, fear etc.), and give the lion his own story that affects the whole novel, a reason why he has no courage and make him a ‘rounder’ character. Even the wicked witch of the east plays a very large role in the novel, and we see how she’s destroyed the land of the munchkins and made them her slaves.

Dorothy’s journey through Oz is epic, spanning from the far east to the far west and I didn’t want to make the yellow road easy for her. She journeys through dark woods, along mountain tops, cities, villages, desolate lands and beautiful fields, so I really wanted to make her quest through Oz memorable, and give each landmark (the dark forest for example) details and dangers, and something new. I’ve written it so that each of Dorothy’s friends is as big a piece of the novel as herself, and so the reader can see the affect of journey on them as a group of strangers who become friends, and the dangers they face along the way.”