Book description
An epic, richly inventive, historically sweeping, magical romance.
Includes exclusive bonus material. When historian Diana Bishop opens an
alchemical manuscript in the Bodleian Library, it's an unwelcome
intrusion of magic into her carefully ordered life. Though Diana is a
witch of impeccable lineage, the violent death of her parents while she
was still a child convinced her that human fear is more potent than any
witchcraft. Now Diana has unwittingly exposed herself to a world she's
kept at bay for years; one of powerful witches, creative, destructive
daemons and long-lived vampires. Sensing the significance of Diana's
discovery, the creatures gather in Oxford, among them the enigmatic
Matthew Clairmont, a vampire genticist. Diana is inexplicably drawn to
Matthew and, in a shadowy world of half-truths and old enmities, ties
herself to him without fully understanding the ancient line they are
crossing. As they begin to unlock the secrets of the manuscript and
their feelings for each other deepen, so the fragile balance of peace
unravels... Deborah Harkness is a professor of history at USC,
specializing in science and medicine in early modern Europe. She is the
author most recently of THE JEWEL HOUSE (Yale, 2007), based on her
ground-breaking work on how science was practiced in Elizabethan London.
(And she really did once find a missing manuscript in the Bodleian
Library!)
