As I mentioned last week, I would like to start featuring new releases in a weekly column. This week, I’ll feature one that was actually released in late February, but has rapidly shot to the top of IndieBound‘s “Most Wished For” books list: A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. Only on shelves for 6 weeks, this book has already been read and reviewed 568 times on Amazon, with a 3.5 star overall rating so far. That’s a lot of buzz for a debut novel. (Harkness has published 2 nonfiction titles before Discovery. This is her first novel.) Here’s the synopsis from IndieBound:
A richly inventive novel about a centuries-old vampire, a spellbound witch, and the mysterious manuscript that draws them together.
Deep in the stacks of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, young scholar Diana Bishop unwittingly calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript in the course of her research. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Diana wants nothing to do with sorcery; so after a furtive glance and a few notes, she banishes the book to the stacks. But her discovery sets a fantastical underworld stirring, and a horde of daemons, witches, and vampires soon descends upon the library. Diana has stumbled upon a coveted treasure lost for centuries-and she is the only creature who can break its spell.
Debut novelist Deborah Harkness has crafted a mesmerizing and addictive read, equal parts history and magic, romance and suspense. Diana is a bold heroine who meets her equal in vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont, and gradually warms up to him as their alliance deepens into an intimacy that violates age-old taboos. This smart, sophisticated story harks back to the novels of Anne Rice, but it is as contemporary and sensual as the Twilight series-with an extra serving of historical realism.
Below, I’ve included an Amazon product link and links to as many reviews of this title as Zemanta could find for me. Happy Reading!
Related articles
- Flying High: Deborah Harkness’s A Discovery of Witches (tor.com)
- ‘A Discovery of Witches’ (crooked-kitty.com)
- Review of A Discovery of Witches (Deborah Harkness) (brothersjudd.com)
- A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness (THERE’S A BIG BUZZ IN THE U.S. ABOUT THIS ONE) (booktopia.com.au)
- Deborah Harkness: A Discovery of Witches Review (pastemagazine.com)
- Even Stevens’s CBR-III review #8: A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness (cannonballread3.wordpress.com)
- Review: “A Discovery of Witches” by Deborah Harkness 2011 (dirtysexybooks.com)
- ‘A Discovery of Witches’: at Oxford University, unrest among the supernatural set (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- ‘A Discovery of Witches’: USC professor looks for a deeper magic than ‘Twilight’ (herocomplex.latimes.com)
- Excerpt: A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness (tor.com)
[...] to review it for us here. I’ve been dying to get to this book ever since I featured it in a Book Buzz column a while back. Happily, she agreed to share her thoughts with us here. Thanks, [...]