An instant New York Times bestseller and Reese Witherspoon Book Club
pick from beloved author Alice Hoffman--the spellbinding prequel to
Practical 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.
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. Yet, the 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 memorable aunts
in Practical Magic, while Vincent, their beloved brother, will leave
an unexpected legacy.
Alice Hoffman delivers "fairy-tale promise with real-life struggle"
(The New York Times Book Review) in a story how the only remedy for
being human is to be true to yourself. Thrilling and exquisite, real and
fantastical, The Rules of Magic is "irresistible...the kind of book
you race through, then pause at the last forty pages, savoring your
final moments with the characters" (USA TODAY, 4/4 stars).
