Matilda "Matt" Black possesses the unique ability to speak with inanimate objects and witness the dreams of other people. Alone, yet never lonely, she’s now found a kindred spirit in Edmund Reynolds—a wandering witch of a spiritual quest to help those in need.   Together, these two special people who live outside normal reality will embark on an odyssey of the imagination. They will look into the darkest depths of the past. And they will encounter things both wonderful and terrifying.   “ A Red Heart of Memories is full of beautiful, impossible magic. Hoffman has a unique talkent for manking prose soar.”— SF Site   “…Hoffman’s best and most complete novel to date.”— Locus She doesn't write multivolume fantasy epics--what Nina Kiriki Hoffman does write are haunting, character-driven short stories and novels. Matt (Matilda) Black, one of the two main characters in A Red Heart of Memories , appeared in two previous Hoffman novellas: Unmasking and Home for Christmas . Matt is a wanderer with the power to speak to inanimate objects and watch other people's thoughts and dreams. She meets a wandering witch, Edmund Reynolds. "Mostly I just wander from one place to the next," said Edmund, "waiting to be needed for something, then trying to figure out what it is." Spirit tells Edmund he can help Matt, even if she doesn't want him hanging around, and Matt finds that she can help Edmund in return. Hoffman's fantasy is very much in the spirit of Jonathan Carroll's The Marriage of Sticks and Peter S. Beagle's Tamsin . She's written for children and her books are suitable for young adult readers, but don't be fooled. They're sophisticated, well-crafted stories written in a distinctive, uncynical voice and filled with magical reality. In 1994, Hoffman won the Bram Stoker First Novel Award for The Thread That Binds the Bones , and both The Silent Strength of Stones (1995) and A Red Heart of Memories were nominated for the World Fantasy Award. As of 2001, Hoffman had been nominated for Nebula Awards four times. --Nona Vero Over the past twenty-four years, Nina Kiriki Hoffman has sold novels, juvenile and media tie-in books, short story collections, and more than two hundred short stories. Her works have been finalists for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Sturgeon, and Endeavour awards. Her first novel, The Thread That Binds the Bones , won a Stoker Award. Nina's YA novel Spirits that Walk in Shadow and her science fiction novel Catalyst were published in 2006. Her fantasy novel Fall of Light will be published by Ace Books in May.