Summary

Heartless, by Marissa Meyer, imagines how the Queen of Hearts from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland became a vicious woman with a penchant for separating people from their heads. Meyer tells the story of Catherine as a young woman who had a passion for baking and hoped to one day fall in love, but whose plans for a happy life go awry.

Chapter 1: Catherine bakes beautiful lemon tarts and stands back to admire them. Cheshire appears and teases her about talking to her food. When he reaches out to touch a tart, Catherine tells him they are for the King. She and her maid Mary Ann want to open a bakery and she hopes that the King’s praise will draw in customers.

Cheshire asks if lemons are in season and Catherine says they are not, but that the lemons...