I’ll make a note that it needs to be boxed after you return it.” “This one’s not been called up for a while. The thin gold rims of his glasses sparked in the dim light provided by the old bronze reading lamp that was attached to a shelf. He laid it on top of the pile and stooped to inspect it. “Oh, there’s one more.” Sean disappeared into the cage for a moment and returned with a thick, quarto-size manuscript bound simply in mottled calfskin. He grinned back and slid the manuscripts-all containing fine examples of alchemical illustrations from the Bodleian’s collections-over his battered oak desk, each one tucked into a protective gray cardboard box. I always think you’re talking to someone else.” Sean, who’d shared many a drink with me in the pink-stuccoed pub across the street in our graduate-student days, had been filling my requests without complaint for more than a week. I was flagrantly disregarding the rules limiting the number of books a scholar could call in a single day. “Thanks,” I said, flashing him a grateful smile. A lock of sandy hair tumbled over his forehead when he did.
The front of his argyle sweater was streaked with the rusty traces of old leather bindings, and he brushed at it self-consciously. Bishop, your manuscripts are up,” he whispered, voice tinged with a touch of mischief. Even so, I was surprised when Sean stopped me at the call desk. But I knew there was something odd about it from the moment I collected it.ĭuke Humfrey’s Reading Room was deserted on this late-September afternoon, and requests for library materials were filled quickly now that the summer crush of visiting scholars was over and the madness of the fall term had not yet begun. To an ordinary historian, it would have looked no different from hundreds of other manuscripts in Oxford’s Bodleian Library, ancient and worn. The leather-bound volume was nothing remarkable. The story continues in book two, Shadow of Night, and concludes with The Book of Life. Harkness has created a universe to rival those of Anne Rice, Diana Gabaldon, and Elizabeth Kostova, and she adds a scholar's depth to this riveting tale of magic and suspense. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont. In this tale of passion and obsession, Diana Bishop, a young scholar and a descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript, Ashmole 782, deep in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Now “ hot show that’s like Twilight meets Outlander” ( Thrillist) airing Sundays on AMC and BBC America, as well as streaming on Sundance Now and Shudder.ĭeborah Harkness’s sparkling debut, A Discovery of Witches, has brought her into the spotlight and galvanized fans around the world. Book one of the New York Times-bestselling All Souls trilogy-"a wonderfully imaginative grown-up fantasy with all the magic of Harry Potter and Twilight” ( People).
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