An electrifying novel about a woman struck by lightning, which brings together, as only Hoffman can, the fabulous and the real, chaos theory and the irrational everyday moment, in a compelling, haunting and sexy novel, with a sharp edge. As in a fairy tale (and the echo in the title is not accidental), the story starts with a little girl who makes a wish one snowy night and ruins her life. Her mother is killed on an icy road. Be careful what you wish for. Later, as a smalltown librarian who knows more than is good for her about ways of death, she lives a quiet life without excitement. One day, standing by her kitchen window, she is struck by lightning. But instead of ending her life, this cataclysmic event sparks it into beginning - if only she knew what she was supposed to do with this second chance. She goes in search of Lazarus Jones, a fellow survivor who was struck dead for forty minutes, but walked away. Perhaps this stranger who has seen death face to face can teach her to live without fear. When she finds him, he is her opposite, a burning man whose breath can boil water and whose touch scorches. As an obsessive love affair begins between them, both are forced to hide their most dangerous secrets - what turned one to ice and the other to fire. THE ICE QUEEN is a haunting story of passion, loss, and the secrets that come to define us, if we're not careful.

Elisa - orphaned as a child, raised by a 'fallen woman', fed by fairy tales - has lived in an outlandish imaginary world for years. When her guardian dies, she feels compelled to confront her family's tortured and dramatic past, weaving the tale of her mother and grandmother through a history of intrigue, treachery, deception and desire. But as her saga of three generations of Sicilian women proceeds, it becomes something else entirely, taking in a whole legacy of oppression and injustice. By turns flamboyant and intense, raging and funny, Lies and Sorcery is a celebration of the female imagination, and the power of storytelling itself. First published in 1948, Elsa Morante's debut novel won the Viareggio Prize and earned her the lasting admiration of generations of writers from Italo Calvino and Natalia Ginzburg to Elena Ferrante. Translated by Jenny McPhee