From Publishers Weekly:
"Magic is once again knitted into the fabric of a Hoffman novel, this one revolving around a New England family living with the legacy of witchcraft. " Click on amazon.com for more.

Advance Reading Copy

Thank you, thank you, thank you for the RABCK watchcat!! I have been wanting to read this as it's Alice Hoffman's latest. I just wish I had something on your wish list!

And I don't mind uncorrected proofs at all...in fact, I think it's kind of fun finding the errors (must be the editor in me)!

About the story:

Magic is once again knitted into the fabric of a Hoffman novel, this one revolving around a New England family living with the legacy of witchcraft. In colonial Unity, Mass., Rebecca Sparrow was tried as a witch and drowned because of her physical inability to feel pain. Her present-day descendants possess extraordinary gifts. Elinor, the dying matriarch of the Sparrow family, has the ability to discern liars. Her estranged daughter, Jenny Avery, can divine other people's dreams. And Jenny's 13-year-old daughter, Stella, knows how and when people will die.

Jenny is recently divorced from Will Avery, a charming but erratic and hard-drinking music teacher; she and Stella live in Boston, where Stella is a charity case at the exclusive Rabbit School for girls. Brainy and unpopular, Stella chafes at her mother's invasive omniscience while trying to make sense of her own powers. When Stella asks her father, Will, to try to prevent a death, he ends up becoming a murder suspect, and her mother sends her to live with Elinor at Cake House, her home in Unity, until the scandal dies down.

Jenny and Will soon join her, as does Will's brother, Matt, a reclusive scholar, and Stella's best friend, the audacious, jaded Juliet Aronson. Matt is studying the life of Rebecca Sparrow, and his research reveals strange echoes of Rebecca's story in the lives of her descendants. Subplots are numerous: Brock Stewart, Elinor's doctor, has been secretly in love with Elinor for years; his teenage grandson, Hap, meets the Sparrows and develops a crush on Juliet; and Will becomes close with Liza, an old high school classmate of Jenny's.

Once I'm done reading this, I'm going to bookray it. Here's the list (in order):

1)  RealBookWorm - Fredericton (snuck in before it goes to Toronto)
2)  cestmoi - Toronto (will ship Canada/US)
3)  Ri - Toronto (will ship Canada/US)
4)  EarthAngel - Newfoundland (will ship international)
5)  Booknose - Indiana (will ship US)
6)  Tzurriz - Florida (will ship international)
7)  casseytara - Oklahoma (will ship international)
8)  kymberlie - Houston, TX (will ship US)
9)  cytronella - Plantersville, TX
10) ehadams - West LA, CA (will ship US/Canada)
11) illinicheme - Oakland, CA (will ship US)
12) fanclub - Hawaii (will ship US/Canada)
13) CrazyPooka - Oregon (will ship US, maybe Canada)
14) LaurieS - New Hampshire (near end)(will ship international)
15) Theresa-A - Nottingham, England (will ship international if needed)
16) Robbiesmum - Lancaster, England (will ship international)
17) blacksheeps99 - Austria (will ship international)

When you get/finish the book, please PM the next person on the list for their address. Click a screen name in the list above to go to that member's bookshelf.

Finished reading this today. Like all of Hoffman's books I've read it was a thoughly engaging read! There is something about her writing style that I find comfortable. I really liked this story of the Sparrow women and their troubles and triumphs...I'm sure there was a lot of real history and legend mixed in as well. Hoffman has a taste for the magical.

This will be sent to its first bookray stop soon.

Sept. 9: Passed on to RealBookWorm. She has one week to read it before it goes to Toronto :-)

Oops! I was so intent on reading the book, I forgot to journal that I received it! I'm already on page 30 and that was just from reading a bit after I ate my lunch today at work. So far, I'm really enjoying my first Alice Hoffman book!

I'll journal again when I've finished it (within a week). :)

Okay, I'm totally hooked on Alice Hoffman now. Thankfully, I already have 3 or 4 of her other books on my TBR pile. I think they'll be moving to the top!

I loved this story and I really like her style of writing. I just didn't want to put the book down! That doesn't happen often enough any more when I'm reading. It's so nice to find another writer who can do that for me.

Thanks so much MissQ for letting me read this before it flies off to Toronto.

Received this other day via MissQ's Mom - our own personal book mole :) Will read and move on asap. I'm just finishing up another bookring book, then this one is next. I have enjoyed most of Hoffman's novels, so I'm hoping this will be a treat!

Reading this was so much pleasure. The characters are so interesting and full of depth and humanity - both good and bad humanity. These characters are so real and vivid. This story was so much more about characters and not circumstance than her other novels I have read. Wonderful insight into mother/daughter relationships.

This goes to Ri (next on the list) at the Toronto October Meetup via Penhaligon who has again agreed to carry books for me!

Thanks for sharing this with us watchcat and Suzie.

I received this tonight at the Toronto Meetup. I'll be getting to it very soon!

Hello all, I loved this book! It was great reading for the train on the ride to and from school each day. So engaging! One of the attributes I love most about Alice Hoffman's writing is that at different moments of the story I relate with different characters. Each character seem to reflect a piece of me.

Sorry that this one took so long to send on. After finishing the book, it somehow ended up in a pile of other forgotten "to dos" that was not discovered until recently! Ah, such is the life of a med student I suppose! Please accept my apologies!

**Update: Everyone still to receive The Probable Future bookray, please note that there have been a couple of changes to the list. One person was added and two removed. Please look at the list in the journal entry and not the one in the book before mailing it out! Sorry for any confusion.**