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Children

• Moondog (2004) with Wolfe Martin and Yumi Heo, Illustrator
  Michael McKenzie and his sister Hazel are awakened a few nights before Halloween by growling and howling. The next morning, they find their front yard in shambles, and a small bundle cowering on their doorstep. It's a puppy! A cute, darling little mutt they decide to call Angel. They soon learn, however, that Angel is no ordinary puppy, especially when the moon is full..... Hoffman and her teenage son's delightful tale of the challenges of owning a were-puppy is charmingly illustrated by acclaimed artist Yumi Heo.  Ages 4-8.

• Horsefly (2000) with Lou Fancher and Steve Johnson, painters
  A breathtaking storybook about a timid girl and her magical horse.
  
  Jewel is terrified of everything - especially the horses on her ranch. But when her grandfather puts the fate of a scrawny newborn foal in her hands, she has no choice but to care for the sad little thing she names Bug. As the two grow fond of each other, Jewel discovers an extraordinary secret about Bug - he can fly! Unfortunately, someone else has discovered the foal's secret. Can Jewel overcome her fears in order to save her best friend?
  
  This lyrical story, rich with Alice Hoffman's signature magical realism and paired with sweeping, lush paintings, is a delightful read-aloud experience for the whole family. Ages 4-8.

• Fireflies: A Winter's Tale (1999) with Wayne McLoughlin, Illustrator
  Alice Hoffman reveals the magic in everyday life in her first book for children. Bumbling Jackie Healy becomes an unexpected hero when the fireflies fail to show up on the first of May and his town is frozen in endless winter. Ages 5-8.

Fiction

• The Story Sisters: A Novel (2009)
  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.

• The Third Angel (2008)
  This stunningly original and magical story follows three women in love with the wrong men. Headstrong Madeline Heller finds herself hopelessly attracted to her sister’s fiancé…Frieda Lewis, a doctor’s daughter who has run off to London, becomes the muse of an ill-fated rock star… and beautiful, reckless Bryn Evans is set to marry an Englishman while she’s secretly obsessed with her ex-husband, a dangerous and love-besotted New Yorker. At the heart of the novel is Lucy Green, who blames herself for a tragic accident she witnessed at the age of twelve in the same London hotel where the others have found themselves. Lucy has spent four decades searching out the Third Angel, the angel on Earth who will renew her faith.
  
  Evoking the worlds of Notting Hill, Kings Road, and Kensington while moving back and forth in time from the 90s, to the 60s, and then to the 50s, The Third Angel charts the unique, alchemical nature of love.

• Skylight Confessions (2007)
  Arlyn Singer believes in destiny and love. On the night her father dies she’s sure fate will send her true love to her. But destiny seems to be playing a trick when he sends her John Moody who is dreamy Arlyn’s opposite. Their marriage leads them and their children to a glass house in Connecticut built by John’s father, a place of skylights and fairytales, of ghosts and regret. Their son, Sam, is a brilliant, explosive artist. Daughter Blanca is a beautiful loner who tries to protect her brother from his demons and his destiny and who lives in a world of books. Will, Arlyn and John’s grandson, is left to put together the mysterious pieces of their family, a puzzle of people who don’t know the first thing about love. All families make their own rules, and the Moodys are no exception.

• The Ice Queen (2005)
  A woman who leads a quiet life, keeping other people at a cool distance, one day utters an idle wish to be struck by lightning — and her wish is granted. Instead of killing her, this cataclysmic event marks a strange and powerful new beginning. As the woman soon finds herself drawn into a passionate relationship with another survivor of a lightning strike, a mysterious stranger who harbors dark secrets. Their affair becomes the center of a riveting story of loss, love, and redemption. Here is a novel that reveals Alice Hoffman at the very height of her powers.

• Blackbird House (2004)
  Alice Hoffman waves a web of tales, all set in Blackbird House. This small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod is a place that is as bewitching and alive as the characters we meet: Violet, a brilliant girl who is in love with books and with a man destined to betray her; Lysander Wynn, attacked by a halibut as big as a horse, certain that his life is ruined until a boarder wearing red boots arrives to change his life; Maya Cooper, who does not understand the meaning of love between her mother and father until it is nearly too late. From the time of the British occupation of Massachusetts to our own modern world, family after family’s lives are changed, not only by the people they love but by the lives they lead inside Blackbird House.

• The Probable Future (2003)
  The women of the Sparrow family have lived in New England for generations. Each one is born in the month of March and at the age of thirteen each develops an unusual gift. Elinor can smell a life. Her daughter, Jenny, can see other people’s dreams. Granddaughter Stella has just developed the ability to see how other people will die. Ironically, it is their gifts that have kept Elinor and Jenny apart for many years. But as Stella struggles to deal with her disturbing clairvoyance, the unthinkable happens: one of her premonitions lands her father in jail, wrongly accused of murder.
  
  The ordeal leads Stella to her grandmother and to Cake House, the Sparrow’s ancestral home, filled with talismans and fraught with history. Now three generations of Sparrow women must come together to turn Stella’s potential to ruin into the potential to redeem.

• Blue Diary (2001)
  When Ethan Ford fails to show up for work one day, none of his neighbors would guess that for more than thirteen years he has been running from his past. His true nature has been locked away, as hidden as his real identity. But the devastating truth of Ethan’s history shatters the small town peace of Monroe, Massachusetts. His wife, Jorie, is left with a life that is a mystery, even to herself and his son, Collie, must now decide what kind of man he wants to become.
  
  A compelling mystery, an emotional roller-coaster, Blue Diary is a modern retelling of Bluebeard, a dark fairytale of love gone wrong.

• The River King (2000)
  For more than a century, the small town of Haddan, Massachusetts, has been divided, as if by a line drawn down the center of Main Street, separating those born and bred in the village from those who attend the prestigious Haddan School. But one October night, after an inexplicable death, the two words collide and the town’s divided history is revealed in all its complexity. The lives of everyone involved are unraveled: from Carlin Leander, the fifteen-year-old who is as loyal as she is proud, to Betsy Chase, a woman running from her own destiny; from August Pierce, a boy who unexpectedly finds courage in his darkest hour, to Abel Grey, the police officer who refuses to let unspeakable actions – both past and present – slide by without notice. A wondrous tale of innocence and evil, and of the secrets we keep.
  Movie (2004), Nick Willing, director with Colin Rogers and Liam Cyr  DVD  VHS

• Local Girls (1999)
  Alice Hoffman casts her spell over a Long Island neighborhood filled with dreamers and dreams as she evokes the world of the Samuelsons, a family torn apart by tragedy and bound together by devotion. As Gretel grows up she is witness to the break up of her parents’ marriage, the ups and downs of her cousin Margot’s search for love, the deterioration of a brother who passes up Harvard for a job at the Food Star, and emotional explosions that shatter the suburban quiet. Local Girls presents this acclaimed New York Times bestselling author at her haunting, thought-provoking best.

• Here on Earth (1997) -- Oprah's Book Club selection
  In her most ambitious novel to date, Alice Hoffman delivers a spellbinding tale of love and obsession. After nearly twenty years of living in California, March Murray, along with her fifteen-year-old daughter, Gwen, returns to the small Massachusetts town where she grew up, to attend the funeral of the beloved housekeeper who raised her. Thrust into the world of her past, March slowly realizes the complexity of the choices made by those around her. Alan, the brother whose tragic history has left him grief-stricken; and Hollis, the boy she loved, the man she can’t seem to stay away from.
  
  The riveting themes of Wuthering Heights resonate beneath the surface, and a dangerous question is raised: Can a love that consumes you survive? Or perhaps more important, can anyone survive a love that consumes?

• Practical Magic (1996)
  For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that went wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally endured that fate: 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 darkened house and their love concoctions and their crowd of black cats. All Gillian and Sally wanted to do was escape. One would do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they shared brought them back to each other, and to the magic they couldn’t escape. A delicious novel about witches and real love, family life and everyday spells. A literary incantation.
  Movie (1998), Griffin Dunne, director with Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock  DVD  VHS

• Second Nature (1994)
  In this latter-day Beauty and the Beast a suburban woman discovers her own wild spirit because of a chance encounter.
  
  Robin Moore, coping with a divorce and a troubled teen-aged son, impulsively rescues a stranger from a psychiatric ward – a beautiful, uncivilized innocent who has been raised in the wilderness and possesses no more sophistication than a child. But when she brings him home to her perfectly ordered neighborhood, the events that follow cause Robin to question her wisdom and doubt her own heart – and, ultimately, to change all of her ideas about love and humanity. A novel of suspense and enchantment that is a true page-turner.

• Turtle Moon (1992)
  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.

• Seventh Heaven (1990)
  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.

• At Risk (1988)
  In this groundbreaking novel Alice Hoffman creates an ordinary but unforgettable American family – Polly, a wife and mother. Ivan, her husband. Charlie, their eight-year-old, obsessed with dinosaurs. And Amanda, eleven, who dreams of becoming a gymnast. Amanda is blessed with great determination and strength, but when she is diagnosed with AIDS, she and her family must draw on every bit of courage they possess as their lives are torn apart, and as they discover how deep their love for each other really is.

• Illumination Night (1987)
  Set on Martha’s Vineyard, here is a stunning novel that brings that beautiful island to vivid life – a novel that weaves together the lives of a little boy who can’t grow, an elderly woman who needs to save someone before she passes on, a blond giant, a young couple, a teenaged girl looking for trouble. Lives of intense erotic longing, of quiet understanding, of willful determination. It is a novel of magic and mystery, and a literary event that confirms Alice Hoffman as one of our finest and most compelling writers.

• Fortune's Daughter (1985)
  This fierce and beautiful story charts the histories of two women: Rae, young and unmarried and far from home, awaits the birth of her first child. Lila, a fortune-teller with no interest in the future, has lost her own daughter more than a quarter of a century earlier in New York. When these two women meet in Southern California it’s Earthquake Weather – the time when unexpected things happen. Immediately, their lives and fortunes become intertwined, as Rae tries to break away from the man she has been with since high school and Lila reaches into the past to search for the child she lost.
  
  This contemporary world is set against a series of Russian folktales told by an old woman who lives at the edge of Manhattan, in a place so well hidden it can only be found once in a life-time.

• White Horses (1982)
  Teresa grew up with dreams of dark-eyed fearless heroes on white horses who would one day come to rescue her. The men her mother told her about were a special breed – rules didn’t apply to them or to her brother, Silver. Their intense attachment becomes the stuff of nightmares rather than fairytales. In a dangerous world, Teresa must rescue herself and rewrite her family mythology before it ruins her life.

• Angel Landing (1980)
  Natalie is a therapist in a small Long Island town, living in her aunt Minnie’s boarding house. When a new client walks into her office she makes a classic mistake – she gets involved. He’s an intriguing man, with a tall tale to tell. Under his influence, Natalie questions her current relationship and wonders if she can make a true commitment. Within this humorous love-story of mistaken identities Alice Hoffman creates a town full of original personalities, each with his or her own agenda and fate.

• The Drowning Season (1979)
  On a secluded waterfront estate on the North Shore of Long Island, a matriarch named Esther rules over her clan. But in spite of her sharp tongue and manipulative ways, she cannot quite keep control over her family. Her son, Phillip, routinely tries to drown himself each summer; her granddaughter dreams of escape. Esther has hired Cohen, a Russian landscaper, to watch over the family as well as the grounds. But Cohen has been watching Esther – and his love for her is growing wild enough to uproot them all.

• Property of: A Novel (1977)
  Alice Hoffman’s first novel, written while she was still a graduate student at Stanford University, introduced her as a major American novelist.

Young Adults

• Incantation (2006)
  Estrella is a Marrano: During the time of the Spanish Inquisition, she is one of a community of Spanish Jews living double lives as Catholics. She is living in a house of secrets, raised by a family who practices underground the ancient and mysterious way of wisdom known as Kabbalah. When Estrella discovers her family’s true identity — and her family’s secrets are made public — she confronts a world she’s never imagined, where new love burns and where friendship ends in flame and ash, where trust is all by vanquished and betrayal has tragic and bitter consequences.

• The Foretelling (2005)
  Rain is a girl with a certain destiny, living in the ancient time of blood and war, raised on mares’ milk, nurtured by the strength of her Amazon sisters. A girl of power, she rides her white horse as fiercely as any demon. Rain – dream rider, warrior, queen-to-be. But then there is the foretelling and a black horse appears in her future. Rain begins to hope for a different life beyond constant war. She wonders about the forbidden world and the words her mother and sisters never say: Mercy. Men. Love. Peace.
  
  This suspenseful story of a girl becoming a woman within an Amazon culture is based on myth and on archeological finds of warrior women in Russia and the Ukraine.

• Green Angel (2003)
  Alice Hoffman has created a modern fairy tale for adults and children in her most heart-breaking tale filled with echoes of loss and courage that bring 9/11 to mind.
  
  Left on her own when her family is lost in a terrible disaster, fifteen-year-old Green is haunted by her present and her past. Struggling to survive in a place where nothing seems to grow and ashes are everywhere, Green retreats into the ruined realm of her garden. When she destroys her feelings, she also destroys herself, erasing the girl she’d once been as she inks ravens and bats onto her skin. It is only through a series of mysterious encounters with a white dog and a mute boy that Green relearns the lessons of love and begins to heal as she tells her story.

• Water Tales: Aquamarine And Indigo (2003)
  Friendships are forever. Love knows no bounds. The supernatural graces the everyday in unexpected ways. These themes have made Alice Hoffman a cherished best selling author across the country. Now, with Aquamarine and Indigo, she gives us wonderful magic realism for all ages. Unforgettable stories of love, loss, hope, and amazement--in one mass market volume.

• Indigo (2002)
  Oak Grove is a dry, dusty town haunted by memories of a past flood. Everyone dreads the water – except two brothers, Trevor and Eli McGill. Nicknamed Trout and Eel for their darting quickness and the mysterious webbing between their fingers and toes, the boys dream of the farthest seas and of a magical past they barely remember.
  
  Martha Glimmer, the boys’ loyal friend, has her own reasons to help them reach their hearts’ desire. She’s running away from her own memories – of her mother’s death, her father’s grief, and of the time before her heart was broken.
  
  Little do Martha, Trout and Eel know that running away will lead them on a journey back to their own true natures…. A tender and engaging story, brimming with an extraordinary blend of wonder and reality, possibility and loss, and the reminder that love is something we never lose.

• Aquamarine (2001)
  Hailey and Claire are spending their last summer together when they discover something at the bottom of the murky pool at the Capri Beach Club. There in the depths is a mysterious and beautiful creature with a sharp tongue and a broken heart, a mermaid named Aquamarine who has left her family to search for true love on land. Now, as this mythological but very real being starts to fade in the hot August sun, a rescue begins.
  
  On the edge of growing up, Hailey and Claire learn that life can take an unpredictable course, that friendship can be forever, and that magic can be found in unexpected places.
  Master storyteller Alice Hoffman had written a tale of true enchantment, a luminous lesson on
  Movie (2006), Elizabeth Allen, director with Emma Roberts and Joanna 'JoJo' Levesque  DVD