Overbooked Book Lists
Magic Booklist
Page Modified: June 19, 2009
Updated as time allows...Novels about Magic & Magicians
Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.- The Hummingbird Wizard
Author: Blevins, Meredith
Publisher: Forge $ 24.95 ISBN: 0765307693 Date: 2003
PW
Kirkus
LJ
Driving full-steam-ahead with her life after the unexpected death of her husband, Annie Szabo was not planning on veering off course again. Sexy, witty, and original, Blevins paints a portrait of a vibrant family, led by two women who refuse to let a little homicide ruin their enjoyment of life.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | Woo Woo Mystery Stars | All Stars
Updated 8.13.03 - The Man from Beyond
Author: Brownstein, Gabriel
Publisher: Norton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0393051528 Date: 2005
Booklist
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle arrives in New York on a spiritualist crusade, defending the powers of the mysterious medium Margery. His good friend Harry Houdini is a skeptic, and when Doyle claims Margery's powers are superior to Houdini's, the magician goes on the attack.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Elementary Stars | Magic & Magicians | Spiritualist Stars
Updated 8.15.05 - Hocus
Author: Burke, Jan
Publisher: Simon & Schuster List Price: $22 ISBN: 0684803445 Date: 1997
Booklist
In this thunderously paced heart-stopper by the author of Remember Me, Irene, intrepid sleuth/reporter Irene Kelly's skills are put to the ultimate test when her detective husband Frank is taken hostage. - Jonathan Strange
& Mr. Norrell
Author: Clarke, Susanna
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 29.95 ISBN: 1582344167 Date: 2004
Booklist
Kirkus
PW
Sophisticated, witty, and ingeniously convincing, Clarke's magisterial novel weaves magic into a flawlessly detailed vision of historical England. She has created a world so thoroughly enchanting that it leaves readers longing for more.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 7.12.04 - Practical Magic
Author: Hoffman, Alice
Publisher: Putnam $ 22.95 ISBN: 0399140557
Date: 1995
Booklist
PW
From the bestselling author of Blue Diary comes a novel that reveals what happens when magic competes with real love. At the heart of this work are Gillian and Sally Owens, whose conjuring spinster aunts raised them not with square meals and curfews but with magic spells and respect for the powers of nature.
Updated 7.6.04 - Now You See It: Toby Peters
Author: Kaminsky, Stuart M.
Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 25 ISBN: 0786714239 Date: 2004
Booklist
Illusion gets more deadly than reality on Toby Peter's 24th outing.
Updated 10.4.04 - Now You See It . . .
Author: Matheson, Richard
Publisher: Tor $ 19.95 ISBN: 0312857136 Date: 1994
PW
Maximillian Delacorte was once the world's greatest stage magician. Now a recluse, suffering from a mysterious disease, he lures his family and associates to his lonely estate for an afternoon of magic, madness, and revenge. Bodies appear and disappear without warning, severed heads speak words of hate, and nothing is ever quite what it appears. As grisly tricks lead to ever more surprising twists, not even the Great Delacorte can tell where illusion ends--and murder begins.
Updated 8.2.04 - The Magician's Wife
Author: Moore, Brian
Publisher: Dutton Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0525944001 Date: 1998
PW
LJ
Booklist
Kirkus
From the bestselling author of The Statement comes an ambitious novel of action, suspense, and twisted complexity. Summoned to the country estate of Napoleon III, the famed illusionist Henri Lambert and his wife, Emmeline, are drawn into an elaborate plot to further the French imperialist drive into North Africa and subdue the rebellious Arab tribes threatening jihad.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Historical Fiction Stars - Shell Game: A Mallory Novel
Author: O'Connell, Carol
Publisher: Putnam List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399144951 Date: 1999
Booklist
PW
Library Journal
The recreation of a legendary magic trick goes horribly awry on live television - a terrible accident, everyone agrees. But two people know otherwise. One is an aged magician in a private hospital and the other is streetwise Kathy Mallory, now a New York City policewoman.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - The Gift
O'Leary, Patrick
Publisher: Tor List Price: $22.95 ISBN: 0312864027 Date: 1997
PW
Patrick O'Leary's first novel, Door Number Three, was named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year. His second novel is fantasy with all the wit and charm of the first. It is the story of a boy and a king and their quest to confront the Usher of the Night and rid their land of old near-forgotten magic perverted by long misuse.
- The Magician's Assistant
Patchett, Ann
Publisher: Harcourt Brace List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0151002630 Date: 1997
PW
Kirkus
Welcome to the magic show, where love defies logic, family are people you've never met, and commitments last more than a lifetime. What is to become of a magician's assistant without her magician? She begins a journey of a lifetime as she finds newfound strength and may at last find the kind of love she's always been denied. - Circle of Five
Author: Riccio, Dolores Stewart
Publisher: Kensington $ 14 (paper) ISBN: 0758203004 Date: 2003
Booklist
Now that her children are grown, her lout of an ex-husband is gone, and her herbal remedy business has taken off, Cass Shipton is free to enjoy the simple comforts of her grown-up life. But Cass's idyllic, small-town life changes after she bumps carts at the local supermarket with a stranger in a green cap.
Updated 3.13.03 - The Perfect Play
Author: Wener, Louise
Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060585471 Date: 2004
LJ
A young woman risks everything in search of her deadbeat professional poker playing father in this novel of high stakes, lost love and poker. Shuffling a hand that includes an overprotective boyfriend, twin magician stepbrothers and a Las Vegas con man, Audrey is propelled to a play a final game of poker that will change her life forever.
Suggested Reading: Take a Gamble
Updated 4.20.04
Contact...
Ann Chambers Theis (AKA Ann/ACT)
Comments, suggestions, corrections: Ann Chambers Theis (AKA Ann/ACT): overbooked1@verizon.net or ann@overbooked.com
Ann Chambers Theis: Collection Management Administrator, Chesterfield County (VA) Public Library. 9501 Lori Rd. or P.O. Box 297, Chesterfield, VA, 23832. Phone: 804.748.1760.
I really appreciate all the e-mail I receive from avid readers and writers and regret that I am not able to respond to all correspondents.
Who...

Ann Chambers Theis (AKA Ann/ACT)
Comments, suggestions, corrections: Ann Chambers Theis (AKA Ann/ACT): overbooked1@verizon.net or ann@overbooked.com
Ann Chambers Theis: Collection Management Administrator, Chesterfield County (VA) Public Library. 9501 Lori Rd. or P.O. Box 297, Chesterfield, VA, 23832. Phone: 804.748.1760. 
I really appreciate all the e-mail I receive from avid readers and writers and regret that I am not able to respond to all correspondents.
Overbooked is a volunteer project undertaken by Ann Chambers Theis:
Collection Management Administrator, Chesterfield County (VA) Public Library. 9501 Lori Rd. or P.O. Box 297, Chesterfield, VA, 23832. Phone: 804.748.1760.
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