The Probable Future

Alice Hoffman’s most magical novel to date—three generations of extraordinary women are driven to unite in crisis and discover the rewards of reconciliation and love. Women of the Sparrow family have unusual gifts. Elinor can detect falsehood. Her daughter, Jenny, can see people’s dreams when they sleep. Granddaughter Stella has a mental window on the future—a future that she might not want to see. In The Probable Future this vivid and intriguing cast of characters confronts a haunting past—and a very current murder—against the evocative backdrop of small-town New England. By turns chilling and enchanting, The Probable Future chronicles the Sparrows’s legacy as young Stella struggles to cope with her disturbing clairvoyance. Her potential to ruin or redeem becomes unbearable when one of her premonitions puts her father in jail, wrongly accused of homicide. Yet this ordeal also leads Stella to the grandmother she was forbidden to meet and to a historic family home full of talismans from her ancestors. Poignant, arresting, unsettling, The Probable Future showcases the lavish literary gifts that have made Alice Hoffman one of America’s most treasured writers. Praise for The Probable Future “A thrilling adventure of literary alchemy . . . A magical, mystical tour de force of pure entertainment.”—The Seattle Times “Delicious . . . Hoffman is an unapologetic optimist, and optimism is in short supply these days. It feels like a vacation to curl up with [The Probable Future].”—The New York Times Book Review “Instantly alluring . . . A mysterious, modern-day fairy tale . . . Hoffman is an amazingly talented writer with a beautiful sense of sentence construction, an intriguing imagination, and the ability to create compelling, complex characters that readers care about.”—Fort Worth Star-Telegram “Hoffman’s ethereal tale of a family of women with supernatural gifts is a magical escape, grounded in the complex relationships between mothers and daughters.”—Marie Claire

Women of the Sparrow family have unusual gifts. Elinor can detect falsehood. Her daughter, Jenny, can see people's dreams when they sleep. Granddaughter Stella has a mental window to the future - a future that she might not want to see.In Alice Hoffman's latest tour de force, this vivid and intriguing cast of characters confronts a haunting past - and a very current murder - against the evocative backdrop of small-town New England. By turns chilling and enchanting, The Probable Future chronicles the Sparrows' legacy as young Stella struggles to cope with her disturbing clairvoyance. Her potential to ruin or redeem becomes unbearable when one of her premonitions puts her father in jail, wrongly accused of homicide. Yet this ordeal also leads Stella to the grandmother she was forbidden to meet, and to an historic family home full of talismans from her ancestors.

When the women in the Sparrow family reach thirteen, they develop a unique ability. In young Stella's case, she is able to see a person's probable future. When she foresees a gruesome murder, she tells her father about it - but the murder has already been committed and suspicion falls on him. Stella has to hide out with her grandmother Elinor, who lives alone by a lake where Rebecca Sparrow, a washergirl with a deadly gift, was drowned three hundred years before. In Unity, Massachusetts, the same prejudices and mistakes are recyled over generations. Stella herself brings light to this closed world, but the dark thread of the past meets the sinister trail of contemporary murder.

An “intimate, lovely novel, most of whose concerns swirl about the pain and joys of motherhood,” from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Rules of Magic (People). Rae Perry has been in love with Jessup since high school. Two weeks before her eighteenth birthday, they ran away from Boston together and have been moving ever since—five states in seven years. Now they are in Southern California in what they call “earthquake weather,” a time when anything can happen, and Jessup is restless again. This time, Rae fears, he plans to leave without her. Lila Grey is a fortune-teller. More than a quarter century ago, on a cold and icy night in New York City, she gave birth to a daughter she never saw again. Lila is determined to find her lost child, even if it means an end to her happy life with Richard, the loving husband she refuses to let into her past. It is Lila who tells Rae she is pregnant—but the other symbol she reads in Rae’s tea leaves, she refuses to reveal. From that moment forward, their fates are inextricably linked. While Rae searches for the strength to navigate an uncertain future alone, Lila sets out to resolve her history once and for all. This luminous novel, a New York Times Notable Book, is an enthralling tribute to the profound mysteries of motherhood and childbirth from a writer who, in the words of Amy Tan, “takes seemingly ordinary lives and lets us see and feel extraordinary things.”

It is amazing how accurately you can predict what is going to happen when you see patterns. Repeated patterns become the future. This book describes eight patterns that determine how you function as an individual, in your family, in groups to which you belong, and in your work. By recognizing and understanding the patterns, it becomes possible for you to predict the probable future. You can then make choices and decisions based on what will probably happen, and what will likely happen after that. If you apply the principles embedded in the patterns, you can not only change your own path, but also influence those around you. You can alter the probable future from what it is going to be to what you want it to be.

The faculty at the University of Houston's program in Futures Studies share their comprehensive, integrated approach to preparing foresight professionals and assisting others doing foresight projects. Provides an essential guide to developing classes on the future or even establishing whole degree programs.

Every queer person lives with the trauma of AIDS, and this plays out intergenerationally. Usually we hear about two generations—the first, coming of age in the era of gay liberation, and then watching entire circles of friends die of a mysterious illness as the government did nothing to intervene. And now we hear about younger people growing up with effective treatment and prevention available, unable to comprehend the magnitude of the loss. But there is another generation between these two, one that came of age in the midst of the epidemic with the belief that desire intrinsically led to death, and internalized this trauma as part of becoming queer. Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing up with the AIDS Crisis offers crucial stories from this missing generation in AIDS literature and cultural politics. This wide-ranging collection includes 36 personal essays on the ongoing and persistent impact of the HIV/AIDS crisis in queer lives. Here you will find an expansive range of perspectives on a specific generational story—essays that explore and explode conventional wisdom, while also providing a necessary bridge between experiences. These essays respond, with eloquence and incisiveness, to the question: How do we reckon with the trauma that continues to this day, and imagine a way out?

New York Times Bestseller: A lyrical, suspenseful coming-of-age story based on Greek myths of the Amazons, woman warriors living near the Black Sea. Born out of sorrow in an ancient time of blood and war, Rain is a girl marked by destiny. Her mother, Alina, is the proud queen of a tribe of female warriors, yet she refuses to touch or even look at her only daughter. So Rain draws on the strength and knowledge of her Amazon sisters to learn the ways of her people: how to carve spoons out of bones, ride her white horse as fiercely as a demon, and shoot an arrow straight into the heart of an enemy. Determined to win her mother’s love and take her rightful place as the next queen, Rain becomes a brave and determined fighter. But the dream of a black horse clouds her future, portending death. As one devastating battle follows the next, Rain hopes for a different life for her tribe beyond never-ending bloodshed. Peace, mercy, and love, however, are forbidden words in her language—can Rain teach her sisters to speak in a new tongue before it’s too late? Inspired by Greek legends and recent archaeological discoveries in Russia and Ukraine, The Foretelling is a breathtaking achievement from the bestselling author of The Dovekeepers.