Excerpt from The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

They both considered this. The girls had their talents, as did Vincent. He could, for instance, see shadowy bits of the future. He'd known that Franny would come across The Magus today and that they would have this conversation. In fact, he'd written it down on his skin with blue ink. He now held up his arm to show her. Franny finds the book.

"Coincidence," Franny was quick to say. There was no other justifiable cause.

"Are you sure? Who's to say it's not more?" Vincent lowered his voice. "We could try to find out."

They sat together, side by side, pulling their kitchen chairs close, unsure of what bloomed inside them. As they concentrated, the table rose up, hovering an inch off the floor. Franny was so startled she hit the tabletop with the palms of her hands to stop the rising. Immediately it returned to the floor with a clatter.

"Let's wait," she said, flushed with the heat of this strange moment.

"Why wait? The sooner we know what this is, the better. We want to control it, not have it control us."

"There is no it," Franny insisted, logical as always, well aware that her brother was referring to magic. "There's a rational explanation for every action and reaction."

After the incident in the kitchen, the table was always tilted, with plates and glasses tending to slide off the top, as if to remind them that whoever they were, whatever their history might be, Vincent had been correct. They were not like anyone else.

Excerpted from The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman. Copyright © 2017 by Alice Hoffman. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.