Women with psychic powers take center stage in The Vanishers, a paranormal thriller by Heidi Julavits (The Uses of Enchantment) that turns on rivalry between women and the often fraught relationship between mothers and daughters.
Julia Severn's powerful psychic gifts bring her to the Workshop, which is similar in purpose to Hogwarts but has the feel of a small liberal arts college. There Julia meets the beautiful Madame Ackermann, a teacher whose power and charisma make her the obsession of all the students. But when Julia ends up on the wrong side of Madame Ackermann, she awakens one morning to discover that her health is failing--that she is under "psychic attack."
Julia plunges into the convoluted world of psychic intrigue in an attempt to uncover the reason for Madame Ackermann's vendetta--and find a way to stop it. Julia discovers that the solution to the mystery is dangerously close to home, as it concerns her own mother, who committed suicide when Julia was a baby. Julia's journey takes her across Europe and deep into the past, where she witnesses the betrayal and violence in which her mother was embroiled before Julia was ever born.
Bristling with wicked humor and sharp-edged irony, The Vanishers explores the ways in which the dead can haunt the living and the often painful persistence of memory. This novel also addresses head-on the nearly universal fear of discovering the worst about one's parents. Julia faces the worst so that the reader can, vicariously, experience the realization of these fears and their implications for one's psyche. --Ilana Teitelbaum