A young wounded civil war solider is saved by a passionate neighbor, a woman meets a fiercely human historical character, a poet falls in love with a blind man, and a mysterious traveler comes to town in the year when summer never arrives. At the center of everyone's life is a mysterious garden where only red plants can grow, and where the truth can be found by those who dare to look.

Writing at the height of her powers, Alice Hoffman conjures three generations of a family haunted by love. Cool, practical, and deliberate, John is dreamy Arlyn's polar opposite. Yet the two are drawn powerfully together even when it is clear they are bound to bring each other grief. Their difficult marriage leads them and their children to a house made of glass in the Connecticut countryside, to the avenues of Manhattan, and to the blue waters of...

"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...

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...

Four women, Yael--whose father, an expert assassin, has never forgiven her for her mother's death during childbirth--Revka--a local baker's wife who witnessed the murder or her daughter by Roman soldiers--Aziza--a warrior's daughter who was raised like a son--and Shirah--a woman born with uncanny insight and knowledge of ancient magic--are drawn to Masada, a mountain the Judean desert where, in 70 CE, nine hundred Jews withheld for months against...

Charts the lives of three London women, each in love with the wrong man. Meanwhile, a fourth woman who blames herself for a tragic accident she witnessed at age twelve spends decades searching for the Third Angel, the angel on Earth who will renew her faith.

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,...

"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...