Announcing <i>Lessons In Magic</i> and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders

A young witch teaches her mother how to do magic—with very unexpected results—in this relatable, resonant novel about family, identity, and the power of love.

Jamie is basically your average New England academic in-training—she has a strong queer relationship, an esoteric dissertation proposal, and inherited generational trauma. But she has one extraordinary secret: she’s also a powerful witch.

Serena, Jamie’s mother, has been hiding from the world in an old one-room schoolhouse for several years, grieving the death of her wife and the simultaneous explosion in her professional life. All she has left are memories.

Jamie’s busy digging into a three-hundred-year-old magical book, but she still finds time to teach Serena to cast spells and help her come out of her shell. But Jamie doesn’t know the whole story of what happened to her mom years ago, and those secrets are leading Serena down a destructive path.

Now it’s up to this grad student and literature nerd to understand the secrets behind this mysterious novel from 1749, unearth a long-buried scandal hinted therein, and learn the true nature of magic, before her mother ruins both of their lives.

“Lessons in Magic and Disaster is probably my most personal novel so far. I had read so many books where an older person teaches a young person to do magic, but I’d never read one where a young person teaches an older person—this felt like a neat concept at first, but it turned into something a lot deeper the more I worked on it. I ended up with a book about the hard, necessary work of healing yourself and the people you love. Lessons in Magic and Disaster turned into a book about finding a healthy relationship with desire in the face of grief and trauma—and finding joy again.”