Lessons in Magic and Disaster

From the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Lambda Literary, Crawford and Locus Award-winning author of All the Birds in the Sky comes a heartfelt and intimately drawn portrait of a young trans woman witch who teaches her mother magic, following the death of her wife. Perfect for fans of Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susannah Clarke.

Jamie's mother, Serena, has been hiding in an old one-room schoolhouse for several years, since her life fell apart. The death of her wife, to cancer, proved too much for Serena. And Jamie, well Jamie hasn’t been doing too well either.

But Jamie has a secret: she's a powerful witch, and now she's decided to teach Serena to cast spells, so her mother can get her life back. Her magic is a question of exchanges, of creating the world you want to live in.

As the strains of her grief start to affect her marriage to Ro, Jamie realises she doesn’t know the whole story of what happened to her mothers all those years ago. With Serena heading down a destructive path with her magic, and the secrets Jamie is keeping from Ro piling up, it’s only a matter of time before something gives.

Desperately trying to hold it all together, Jamie seeks to understand the secrets of a three-hundred-year-old magical book, her mother and her wife, before it all falls apart.