Alice Hoffman

 
New York Times bestseller

In her spellbinding novels, Alice Hoffman weaves magic and fairy tales into plots thick with today’s gritty realism. This combination is on dazzling display in her twenty-first novel, The Story Sisters, a heartbreaking yet redemptive family saga.

Elisabeth (Elv for short), Meg and Claire are the three beautiful, black-haired Story sisters, who live on Long Island with their divorced mother, Annie. Their close bond and happy lives are altered irrevocably one day when Elv and Meg share an encounter with a stranger that will change them forever. They swear themselves to secrecy and attempt to overcome the trauma as best they can. But Elv is more and more drawn into the fairytale world she creates. Annie doesn’t understand Elv’s suffering and by the time she does realize what is happening with her eldest daughter and tries to help it is too late. Elv will have to live with the choices she has made and the consequences of her actions, some of them tragic, will affect her entire family.

As the girls grow into young women they take separate paths. They turn for help and solace to their beloved grandmother, Natalia, who lives in Paris. It is in her loving home that Claire, rendered mute by the suffering of her family, finally finds her voice and a way to face the future. Slowly, the beauty of Paris, and the love of those closet to them – including a long-legged Frenchman and an innocent little girl – help the Story family find salvation.

Throughout the novel, the shimmering beauty of the natural world to which the girls are so attuned – bees, moths, flowers, trees, storms, birds, heat waves, snow and the night sky – along the rhythm of the changing seasons remind the reader of a realm beyond the human. It is a realm of the senses, of memory, of literature and story-telling, and of the power of true love.

There are few writers who capture the power and redemption of love as Alice Hoffman does. With The Story Sisters she remains in top form, spinning a masterful tale that will leave the reader stunned, yet hopeful and ever more aware of the fragility and beauty of life.

 
An instant New York Times and Indiebound bestseller

Purchase an Exclusive Edition of The World That We Knew at Barnes & Noble

In Berlin in 1941 during humanity’s darkest hour, three unforgettable young women must act with courage and love to survive, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dovekeepers and The Marriage of Opposites Alice Hoffman.

In Berlin, at the time when the world changed, Hanni Kohn knows she must send her twelve-year-old daughter away to save her from the Nazi regime. She finds her way to a renowned rabbi, but it’s his daughter, Ettie, who offers hope of salvation when she creates a mystical Jewish creature, a rare and unusual golem, who is sworn to protect Lea. Once Ava is brought to life, she and Lea and Ettie become eternally entwined, their paths fated to cross, their fortunes linked.

Lea and Ava travel from Paris, where Lea meets her soulmate, to a convent in western France known for its silver roses; from a school in a mountaintop village where three thousand Jews were saved. Meanwhile, Ettie is in hiding, waiting to become the fighter she's destined to be.

What does it mean to lose your mother? How much can one person sacrifice for love? In a world where evil can be found at every turn, we meet remarkable characters that take us on a stunning journey of loss and resistance, the fantastical and the mortal, in a place where all roads lead past the Angel of Death and love is never ending.

Message From Alice To Her Readers

Find the Reading Group Guide here

Listen to an excerpt from the audiobook below, read by Judith Light.

 
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.

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 “Unnamed 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.

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 is 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.

Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman Reading Group Guide - Click to Download 

 
NEW YORK TIMES  BESTSELLER

On the brink of World War II, with the Nazis tightening their grip on Berlin, a mother’s act of courage and love offers her daughter a chance of survival.

“[A] hymn to the power of resistance, perseverance, and enduring love in dark times…gravely beautiful…Hoffman the storyteller continues to dazzle.” —THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

In Berlin, at the time when the world changed, Hanni Kohn knows she must send her twelve-year-old daughter away to save her from the Nazi regime. She finds her way to a renowned rabbi, but it’s his daughter, Ettie, who offers hope of salvation when she creates a mystical Jewish creature, a rare and unusual golem, who is sworn to protect Lea. Once Ava is brought to life, she and Lea and Ettie become eternally entwined, their paths fated to cross, their fortunes linked.

Lea and Ava travel from Paris, where Lea meets her soulmate, to a convent in western France known for its silver roses; from a school in a mountaintop village where three thousand Jews were saved. Meanwhile, Ettie is in hiding, waiting to become the fighter she's destined to be.

What does it mean to lose your mother? How much can one person sacrifice for love? In a world where evil can be found at every turn, we meet remarkable characters that take us on a stunning journey of loss and resistance, the fantastical and the mortal, in a place where all roads lead past the Angel of Death and love is never ending.

The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman Reading Group Guide - Click to Download 

 
Master storyteller Alice Hoffman brings us the conclusion of the Practical Magic series in a spellbinding and enchanting final Owens novel brimming with lyric beauty and vivid characters.

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.

 
From the beloved New York Times bestselling author of The Marriage of Opposites and the Practical Magic series comes an enchanting novel about love, heartbreak, self-discovery, and the enduring magic of books.

One brilliant 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, and books are considered evil. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly captured the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her?

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?

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: “A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.”

This is the story of one woman’s dream. For a little while it came true.

 
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Marriage of Opposites and The Dovekeepers comes a soul-searching story about a young woman struggling to redefine herself and the power of love, family, and fate.

Growing up on Long Island, Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate. Her best friend’s future is destroyed in an accident, while Shelby walks away with the burden of guilt.

What happens when a life is turned inside out? When love is something so distant it may as well be a star in the sky? Faithful is the story of a survivor, filled with emotion—from dark suffering to true happiness—a moving portrait of a young woman finding her way in the modern world. A fan of Chinese food, dogs, bookstores, and men she should stay away from, Shelby has to fight her way back to her own future. In New York City she finds a circle of lost and found souls—including an angel who’s been watching over her ever since that fateful icy night.

Here is a character you will fall in love with, so believable and real and endearing, that she captures both the ache of loneliness and the joy of finding yourself at last. For anyone who’s ever been a hurt teenager, for every mother of a daughter who has lost her way, Faithful is a roadmap.

Alice Hoffman’s “trademark alchemy” (USA TODAY) and her ability to write about the “delicate balance between the everyday world and the extraordinary” (WBUR) make this an unforgettable story. With beautifully crafted prose, Alice Hoffman spins hope from heartbreak in this profoundly moving novel.

Find the Reading Group Guide here

 
A New York Times and National Bestseller

In Seventh Heaven, Alice Hoffman takes us to a typical suburban community of the 1950s – typical until Nora Silk comes to town.

Nora is extraordinary. Strong, sexy, passionate, and extremely mysterious. She is determined to raise her two children without a husband, willing to take love where she finds it, – a woman whose liberated spirit foreshadows the decade ahead.

Everyone in town is touched by her and begins to see themselves as never before. With Nora’s courageous image before them, they begin to ask themselves questions they had never dared ask before, finding answers they never dared to image.

Perhaps Hoffman’s most personal book, Seventh Heaven is an homage to her mother, a single parent in the late fifties and early sixties.

 
A New York Times and National Bestseller

Turtle Moon transports the reader to Verity, Florida, a place where anything can happen during the month of May, when migrating sea turtles come to town, mistaking the glow of the streetlights for the moon. Lucy Rosen, a transplanted New Yorker, is determined to start a new life in Verity, along with her twelve-year-old son, Keith. But neither Lucy nor Keith could begin to imagine what the town holds in store for them. Everything they’ve ever hope for, everything they’ve ever feared, begins to happen. When Julian Cash, Verity-born and fierce enough to paralyze bees with fright, enters their lives, nothing will be the same – for Lucy, and her son, or for Julian.

Sensual, suspenseful, dangerous and magical, Turtle Moon is Alice Hoffman’s most beloved book.