Deborah Harkness Books in Order (All Souls Trilogy, Time’s Convert, The Jewel House)
An American scholar and novelist, Deborah Harkness is best known as the author of the All Souls Trilogy. She also is an executive producer on the television series, A Discovery of Witches, based on her trilogy.
Harkness is a professor of history at the University of Southern California who has been the recipient of multiple honors and awards.
How to read Deborah Harkness’ Series in Order?
The All Souls Books in Order aka A Discovery of Witches
The first three books form what is called the All Souls Trilogy.
- A Discovery of Witches – 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. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont.
- Shadow of Night – reluctant witch Diana Bishop and vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont takes on a trip through time to Elizabethan London, where they are plunged into a world of spies, magic, and a coterie of Matthew’s old friends, the School of Night. As the search for Ashmole 782 deepens and Diana seeks out a witch to tutor her in magic, the net of Matthew’s past tightens around them. Together they find they must embark on a very different – and vastly more dangerous – journey.
- The Book of Life – After traveling through time, Diana Bishop and Matthew Clairmont return to the present to face new crises and old enemies. But the real threat to their future has yet to be revealed, and when it is, the search for Ashmole 782 and its missing pages takes on even more urgency.
- Time’s Convert – On the battlefields of the American Revolution, Matthew de Clermont meets Marcus MacNeil, a young surgeon from Massachusetts. When Matthew offers him a chance at immortality, Marcus seizes the opportunity to become a vampire. But his transformation is not an easy one. Fast-forward to contemporary Paris, where Phoebe Taylor–the young employee at Sotheby’s whom Marcus has fallen for–is about to embark on her own journey to immortality. The shadows that Marcus believed he’d escaped centuries ago may return to haunt them both–forever.
- The Black Bird Oracle – Diana and Matthew receive a formal demand from the Congregation: They must test the magic of their seven-year-old twins, Pip and Rebecca. Concerned with their safety and desperate to avoid the same fate that led her parents to spellbind her, Diana decides to forge a different path for her family’s future and answers a message from a great-aunt she never knew existed, Gwyneth Proctor, whose invitation simply reads: It’s time you came home, Diana. On the hallowed ground of Ravenswood, the Proctor family home, and under the tutelage of Gwyneth, a talented witch grounded in higher magic, a new era begins for Diana: a confrontation with her family’s dark past and a reckoning for her own desire for even greater power—if she can let go, finally, of her fear of wielding it.
Companions to the series
- The All Souls Real-Time Reading Companion – A richly illustrated real-time reading guide that brings to life the world created by Deborah Harkness in A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night, retracing the events of the bestselling novels with illuminating behind-the-scenes details.
- The World of All Souls: A Complete Guide to A Discovery of Witches, Shadow of Night, and the Book of Life – Harkness shares the rich sources of inspiration behind her bewitching novels. She draws together synopses, character bios, maps, recipes, and even the science behind creatures, magic, and alchemy–all with her signature historian’s touch. Bursting with fascinating facts and dazzling artwork, this essential handbook is a must-have for longtime fans and eager newcomers alike.
Non-fiction books by Deborah Harkness
- John Dee’s Conversations with Angels – John Dee’s angel conversations have been an enigmatic facet of Elizabethan England’s most famous natural philosopher’s life and work. Harkness contextualizes Dee’s angel conversations within the natural philosophical, religious and social contexts of his time. She argues that they represent a continuing development of John Dee’s earlier concerns and interests. These conversations include discussions of the natural world, the practice of natural philosophy, and the apocalypse.
- The Jewel House – Deborah Harkness explores the streets, shops, back alleys, and gardens of Elizabethan London, where a boisterous and diverse group of men and women shared a keen interest in the study of nature. These assorted merchants, gardeners, barber-surgeons, midwives, instrument makers, mathematics teachers, engineers, alchemists, and other experimenters, she contends, formed a patchwork scientific community whose practices set the stage for the Scientific Revolution.
If you like Deborah Harkness, you may also want to see our Outlander reading order, or our guide to Kate Mosse’s Languedoc trilogy. Don’t hesitate to follow us on Twitter or Facebook to discover more book series.