Alice Hoffman

Easton Press Alice Hoffman books

Practical Magic - signed edition - 2018

The Rules of Magic - signed edition - 2020

The Book of Magic - signed edition - 2021

Magic Lessons - signed edition - 2021

The Probable Future - signed edition - 2021

The Invisible Hour - signed first edition - 2023

Franklin Library Alice Hoffman books

Seventh Heaven - signed first edition - 1990

Turtle Moon - signed first edition - 1992

 

 

Author Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman, born on March 16, 1952, in New York City, is an American novelist and storyteller acclaimed for her enchanting and imaginative works. With a distinctive style that blends magical realism with poignant storytelling, Hoffman has captivated readers and earned a reputation as a prolific and versatile author. Raised on Long Island, Hoffman developed an early passion for writing and literature. She attended Adelphi University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. Her literary journey began with the publication of her first novel, Property Of, in 1977. However, it was with her second novel, The Dovekeepers (2011), that she gained widespread recognition for her ability to weave historical events with elements of the mystical.

Throughout her career, Hoffman has explored a variety of themes, including love, loss, and the resilience of the human spirit. Many of her works feature strong, complex female protagonists navigating through challenging circumstances. Notable among her novels are Practical Magic (1995), a tale of a family of witches, and The Rules of Magic (2017), a prequel to the former. Hoffman's storytelling often incorporates magical and fantastical elements, infusing her narratives with a sense of wonder and otherworldliness. Her ability to blend the ordinary with the extraordinary has resonated with a diverse readership, establishing her as a prominent voice in contemporary literature.

Beyond her novels, Hoffman has contributed to various anthologies and has written for publications such as The New York Times and The Boston Globe. She has received numerous accolades and awards for her contributions to literature, and her works have been adapted into films and television. Alice Hoffman's impact on the literary world goes beyond her individual novels; she has left an enduring mark on the genre of magical realism and continues to inspire readers with her unique storytelling prowess. As of my last knowledge update in January 2022, she remains an active and influential figure in the world of literature. Some of her notable books are as follows.

Practical Magic (1995)
This novel tells the story of the Owens sisters, Gillian and Sally, who come from a family of witches. The book was later adapted into a film in 1998.

The Dovekeepers (2011)
This historical novel is set in ancient Israel and follows the lives of four women during the siege of Masada. It explores themes of survival, love, and faith.

The Rules of Magic (2017)
This is a prequel to Practical Magic and delves into the lives of the Owens family, exploring the origin of their magical abilities.

The Marriage of Opposites (2015)
This novel is a historical fiction piece based on the life of Rachel Pizzarro, who later became the mother of the famous French painter Camille Pissarro. The story is set in 19th-century St. Thomas.

The Museum of Extraordinary Things (2014)
Set in early 20th-century New York, this novel weaves together the stories of Coralie Sardie, a girl with webbed hands working in her father's "museum of extraordinary things," and Eddie Cohen, a photographer.

Alice Hoffman's writing is often characterized by its lyrical prose and the blending of the ordinary with the extraordinary. She has a unique ability to infuse magical elements into her narratives while exploring the complexities of human relationships. Hoffman has received various literary honors and awards throughout her career, and her works have been widely appreciated by readers around the world.

Practical Magic

The beloved classic novel, the basis of the classic film starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock

For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have endured that fate as well: as children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and their exotic concoctions and their crowd of black cats. But all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape.

When the beautiful and precocious sisters Sally and Gillian Owens are orphaned at a young age, they are taken to a small Massachusetts town to be raised by their eccentric aunts, who happen to dwell in the darkest, eeriest house in town. As they become more aware of their aunts' mysterious and sometimes frightening powers and as their own powers begin to surface the sisters grow determined to escape their strange upbringing by blending into "normal" society.

Longing to escape the Massachusetts hometown that has always blamed their family for whatever goes wrong, Gillian and Sally respectively marry and run away but are drawn back by a seemingly magical force.

But both find that they cannot elude their magic-filled past. And when trouble strikes in the form of a menacing backyard ghost the sisters must not only reunite three generations of Owens women but embrace their magic as a gift and their key to a future of love and passion. Funny, haunting, and shamelessly romantic, Practical Magic is bewitching entertainment Alice Hoffman at her spectacular best.

One will do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they share will bring them back almost as if by magic...

The Owens sisters confront the challenges of life and love in this bewitching novel from New York Times bestselling author Alice Hoffman.

‘What do you do when your long lost little sister shows up on your suburban front step… a dead man in the Oldsmobile that’s blocking your driveway? …You help her bury him in your backyard, underneath a wilting lilac bush that will suddenly spring back to life, bearing masses of heady flowers that remind everyone who passes by of desires they thought they’d long since stifled’ - Vogue

‘Dark comedy and a light touch carry the story along to a truly Gothic climax, complete with heaving skies and witchery on the lawn’ - New York Times

' A scrim of magi c lies gently over [this] fictional world, in which lilacs bloom riotously in July, a lovesick boy's elbows sizzle on a diner countertop and a toad expectorates a silver ring...' - Publishers Weekly

The Rules of Magic

Find your magic

For the Owens family, love is a curse that began in 1620, when Maria Owens was charged with witchery for loving the wrong man.

In this sparkling prequel we meet the Aunts from Practical Magic , sisters Frances and Jet and Vincent , their brother. From the beginning their mother Susanna knew they were Franny with her skin as pale as milk and blood red hair, who could commune with birds; Jet as shy as she is beautiful, who knows what others are thinking, and Vincent so charismatic that he was built for trouble. Susanna needed to set some rules of no walking in the moonlight, no red shoes, no wearing black, no cats, no crows, no candles and certainly, absolutely, no books about magic…

Hundreds of years later, in New York City at the cusp of the sixties, when the whole world is about to change, Susanna Owens knows that her three children are dangerously unique. Difficult Franny, with skin as pale as milk and blood red hair, shy and beautiful Jet, who can read other people’s thoughts, and charismatic Vincent, who began looking for trouble on the day he could walk.

From the start Susanna sets down rules for her children: No walking in the moonlight, no red shoes, no wearing black, no cats, no crows, no candles, no books about magic. And most importantly, never, ever, fall in love. But when her children visit their Aunt Isabelle, in the small Massachusetts town where the Owens family has been blamed for everything that has ever gone wrong, they uncover family secrets and begin to understand the truth of who they are. Back in New York City each begins a risky journey as they try to escape the family curse.

The Owens children cannot escape love even if they try, just as they cannot escape the pains of the human heart. The two beautiful sisters will grow up to be the revered, and sometimes feared, aunts in Practical Magic, while Vincent, their beloved brother, will leave an unexpected legacy.

But the Owens siblings are desperate to uncover who they really are. Each heads down a life-altering course, filled with secrets and truths, devastation and joy, and magic and love. Despite the warning handed down through the family for centuries – Know that for our family, love is a curse – they will all strive to break the rules and find true love.

Everyone needs a little magic in their lives... The Rules of Magic is the long-awaited prequel to Practical Magic, and a New York Times bestseller and Reese Witherspoon's Book Club pick!

The Book of Magic

The Owens family has been cursed in matters of love for over three-hundred years but all of that is about to change. The novel begins in a library, the best place for a story to be conjured, when beloved aunt Jet Owens hears the deathwatch beetle and knows she has only seven days to live. Jet is not the only one in danger—the curse is already at work.

A frantic attempt to save a young man’s life spurs three generations of the Owens women, and one long-lost brother, to use their unusual gifts to break the curse as they travel from Paris to London to the English countryside where their ancestor Maria Owens first practiced the Unnamed Art. The younger generation discovers secrets that have been hidden from them in matters of both magic and love by Sally, their fiercely protective mother. As Kylie Owens uncovers the truth about who she is and what her own dark powers are, her aunt Franny comes to understand that she is ready to sacrifice everything for her family, and Sally Owens realizes that she is willing to give up everything for love.

The Book of Magic is a breathtaking conclusion that celebrates mothers and daughters, sisters and brothers, and anyone who has ever been in love.

 

Magic Lessons

In an unforgettable novel that traces a centuries-old curse to its source, beloved author Alice Hoffman unveils the story of Maria Owens, accused of witchcraft in Salem, and matriarch of a line of the amazing Owens women and men featured in Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic.

It’s no secret that love has plagued the Owens family for centuries. But when did the curse begin, and why? It all began with Maria Owens, who arrived in America in 1680, with a baby in tow. Maria was abandoned in the English countryside by her birth mother and raised by Hannah Owens who warned her, “Always love someone who will love you back.” She inherits Hannah’s Grimoire—a magical book of enchantments that include instructions to heal illnesses,and spells that make a person burn with love for another. When Hannah dies in an attack, Maria leaves for Curacao, where she meets John Hathorne, a magistrate from Salem living freely for the first time in his life as he falls in love with Maria. But Hathorne soon abandons her, before Maria realizes she’s pregnant. When she gives birth to a red-headed baby girl, Faith, who possesses immense magical talent, Maria embarks on a voyage to Salem to face her destiny, with or without magic.

Where does the story of the Owens bloodline begin? With Maria Owens, in the 1600s, when she’s abandoned in a snowy field in rural England as a baby. Under the care of Hannah Owens, Maria learns about the “Nameless Arts.” Hannah recognizes that Maria has a gift and she teaches the girl all she knows. It is here that she learns her first important lesson: Always love someone who will love you back.

But aboard the ship bringing her to America, fate intervenes and she meets a man who will change her life, if she’ll only let him. Her journey, laced with secrets and truths, devastation and joy, magic and curses, will show her that love is the only answer, always.

When Maria is abandoned by the man who has declared his love for her, she follows him to Salem, Massachusetts. Here she invokes the curse that will haunt her family. And it’s here that she learns the rules of magic and the lesson that she will carry with her for the rest of her life. Love is the only thing that matters.

Magic Lessons is a celebration of life and love and a showcase of Alice Hoffman’s masterful storytelling.

 

 

The Probable Future

Alice Hoffman’s most magical novel to date three generations of extraordinary women are driven to unite in crisis and discover the rewards of reconciliation and love.

Three generations of extraordinary women are driven to unite in crisis and discover the rewards of reconciliation and love.

Women of the Sparrow family have unusual gifts. Elinor can detect falsehood. Her daughter, Jenny, can see people's dreams when they sleep. Granddaughter Stella has a mental window on the future a future that she might not want to see.

When the women in the Sparrow family reach thirteen, they develop a unique ability. In young Stella's case, the gift, which is both a blessing and a curse, is the ability to see a person's probable future. Stella foresees a gruesome murder, and tells her charming, feckless father about it, but it is too late - the murder has already been committed and suspicion falls on him. Her mother Jenny, on the other hand, can read other people's dreams, but so often misinterprets them, to her own cost. Hoffman unlocks the caskets of family life and the secret history of a community in this magical story about young love and old love, about making choices - usually the wrong ones - about foresight and consequences, all suffused with the haunting scent of roses and wisteria, and the hum of bees on a summer evening.

In The Probable Future this vivid and intriguing cast of characters confronts a haunting past and a very current murder against the evocative backdrop of small-town New England. By turns chilling and enchanting, The Probable Future chronicles the Sparrows’s legacy as young Stella struggles to cope with her disturbing clairvoyance. Her potential to ruin or redeem becomes unbearable when one of her premonitions puts her father in jail, wrongly accused of homicide. Yet this ordeal also leads Stella to the grandmother she was forbidden to meet and to a historic family home full of talismans from her ancestors.

Poignant, arresting, unsettling, The Probable Future showcases the lavish literary gifts that have made Alice Hoffman one of America’s most treasured writers.

 

 

The Invisible Hour

One June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia’s mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly captured the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her?

Sixteen-year-old Ivy is pregnant and alone. Cast out by her family, she runs away and finds safety in the arms of Joel Davis. He offers a simpler life than the one she had in Boston, a quiet, rural life of rules, peace and community. Little does she realise, Joel is the charismatic leader of a cult known as the Community, and all is not quite as it seems.

Daughter Mia has only known the claustrophobic life of the Community. While out serving the Community one weekend, she secretly commits a transgression – reading. Discovering a world beyond the edges of the Community’s property is intoxicating. But breaking rules carries serious consequences, and sends Mia on a path she could never have imagined.

Through a journey of heartbreak, love, and time, Mia must abandon the rules she was raised with at the Community. As she does, she realizes that reading can transport you to other worlds or bring them to you, and that readers and writers affect one another in mysterious ways. She learns that time is more fluid than she can imagine, and that love is stronger than any chains that bind you.

As a girl Mia fell in love with a book. Now as a young woman she falls in love with a brilliant writer as she makes her way back in time. But what if Nathaniel Hawthorne never wrote The Scarlet Letter ? And what if Mia Jacob never found it on the day she planned to die?

With two fiercely wonderful heroines, The Invisible Hour is a heart-breaking and hopeful novel of family, redemption and the power of love.

From “the reigning queen of magical realism” (Kristin Hannah, New York Times bestselling author), this is the story of one woman’s dream. For a little while it came true.

The latest New York Times bestseller from beloved author Alice Hoffman celebrates the enduring magic of books and is a “wonderful story of love and growth” - Stephen King

Seventh Heaven

Nora is ahead of her time. A single mother in 1950s suburbia, she's strong, sexy, passionate, and mysterious. Everyone in town is touched by her, and in the mirror of her magnetism, people see themselves as never before. With Nora's courageous image before them, they begin to ask themselves questions they had never asked finding answers they had never dared to imagine....

Nora Silk doesn’t really fit in on Hemlock Street, where every house looks the same. She's divorced. She wears a charm bracelet and high heels and red toreador pants. And the way she raises her kids is a scandal. But as time passes, the neighbors start having second thoughts about Nora. The women’s apprehension evolves into admiration. The men’s lust evolves into awe. The children are drawn to her in ways they can't explain. And everyone on this little street in 1959 Long Island seems to sense the possibilities and perils of a different kind of future when they look at Nora Silk...

This extraordinary novel by the author of The River King and Local Girls takes us back to a time when the exotic both terrified and intrigued us, and despite our most desperate attempts, our passions and secrets remained as stubbornly alive as the weeds in our well-trimmed lawns.

"Brilliant and astonishing...Suffused with magic." - Cosmopolitan

Turtle Moon

When Keith Rosen runs away from his Florida home inexplicably taking along a motherless baby his mother is perplexed, terrified, and ultimately takes off on her own journey to find him. The story of a divorced woman, her disillusioned teenage son, and the events that change their lives in ways both simple and extraordinary, Turtle Moon follows their path, in a suspenseful, beautifully written story that confirms once again the exquisite talent of Alice Hoffman.

Verity, home to more divorced women from New York than any other town in Florida, is where Lucy moves with her son Keith to get away from her ex. But when Keith runs off with a baby, after the child's mother is murdered, the stage is is set for mayhem, thrills, and unexpected romance.

The New York Times bestselling author of "The Dovekeepers" presents "a captivating...truly original novel" (Cosmopolitan), the story of a divorced woman, her disillusioned teenage son, and the events that change their lives in ways both simple and extraordinary.