The ice queen - Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman at her electrifying best, in a dark, compelling and magical novel about a woman struck by lightning.

Haunting and sexy, The Ice Queen is a fairy tale for grown-ups which brings together, as only Hoffman can, the fabulous and the real, chaos theory and the irrational everyday moment, seduction and danger. As every fairy tale should, it starts with a little girl who makes a wish one snowy night and ruins her life. Be careful what you wish for...

Later, as a small-town librarian, she lives quietly, a splinter of ice in her heart. Until one day, at her kitchen window, she is struck by lightning. Instead of ending her life, this cataclysmic event sparks off a new beginning. She goes in search of a fellow survivor who was struck dead but got up and walked away. Her opposite, he is a burning man whose breath can boil water and whose touch scorches. As an obsessive love affair explodes into life, 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 grief, addictive passion, second chances and the secrets that come to define us – if we’re not careful.