Alice Hoffman developed a taste for the magical at an early age from reading Grimm's fairy tales and stories by Ray Bradbury; an affinity for magic permeates all of her fiction. Her novels, short stories, and children's books revolve around archetypal symbols, fairy-tale structures, and the interweaving of the fantastic with the quotidian. Her novels have been named notable books of the year by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and Library Journal. Although her use of fairy-tale structures allies her with authors such as Angela Carter, Robert Coover, and Gregory Maguire, most reviewers classify her writing as magic realism, descended from Nathaniel Hawthorne and related to Gabriel García Márquez, Salman Rushdie, and Isabel Allende. Her characters navigate Romantic landscapes haunted by ghosts, animals, or other wild creatures and often must resolve the almost Gothic grip the past holds on their lives...