Angel: A Maximum Ride Novel

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Starkville High School, Starkville, Mississippi

Steamboat Springs High School, Steamboat Springs, Colorado

Stroudsburg Middle School, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania

Sumner High School, Sumner, Washington

The Academy of Our Lady, Marrero, Louisiana

United High School, Laredo, Texas

W. L. Chenery Middle School, Belmont, Massachusetts

Waukegan High School, Waukegan, Illinois

West Brook Middle School, Paramus, New Jersey

Wichita High School East, Wichita, Kansas

Yorkville Elementary School, Union Grove, Wisconsin

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FEBRUARY 2012

The final episode of

the beloved blockbuster series

is coming soon!

ATTENTION, ALL MAX FANS!

If you liked this ride, you’ll LOVE the newest series

phenomenon from JAMES PATTERSON. . . .

WITCH & WIZARD

THE GIFT

THE MAGIC IS EVERYWHERE.

AVAILABLE NOW!

Turn the page for a sneak preview.

Whit

HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED, to the best of my shattered ability to recall it.

I do remember that I couldn’t have been more lost and alone as I wandered the streets of this gray, crowded, and forsaken city. Where is my sister? Where are the others from the Resistance? I kept thinking, or maybe muttering the words like some homeless madman.

The New Order has already disfigured this once beautiful city beyond recognition. It seems like a decaying corpse swelling with mindless maggots. The suffocatingly low sky, the featureless buildings—even the faces of the nervously rushing people flooding around me—are as colorless and lifeless as the concrete under my feet.

I know the general populace has been efficiently brainwashed by the New Order, but these citizens seem a little too hushed, a little too urgent, a little too riveted to the scraps of propaganda clutched in their hands like prayer books.

Suddenly, my eyes spot a word in bold letters on the paper: EXECUTION.

And then the huge video displays hanging above the boulevard light up, and everything becomes clear to me. Every pedestrian stops and stands stock-still, and every head turns upward as if there has suddenly been an eclipse.

On the video screens, a hooded prisoner—small-framed, frail-looking—is kneeling on a starkly lit stage.

“Wisteria Allgood,” blares a bone-chilling voice, “do you wish to confess to the use of the dark arts for the wicked purpose of undermining all that is good and proper in our society?”

This can’t be happening. My heart is a big lump in my throat. Wisty? Did that voice really just say Wisteria Allgood? My sister’s on an executioner’s scaffold?

I grab a slack-jawed adult by his dismally gray overcoat lapels. “Where is this execution happening? Tell me right now!”

“The Courtyard of Justice.” He blinks at me irritably, as if I’ve woken him from a deep sleep. “Where else?”

“Courtyard of Justice? Where’s that?” I demand of the man, throwing my hands around his neck, nearly losing control of my own strength. I swear, I’m ready to