The Black Bird Oracle: A Novel (All Souls Series #5)
Description
Diana Bishop journeys to the darkest places within herself—and her family history—in the highly anticipated fifth novel of the beloved #1 New York Times bestselling All Souls series.
Deborah Harkness first introduced the world to Diana Bishop, an Oxford scholar and witch, and vampire geneticist Matthew de Clermont in A Discovery of Witches. Drawn to each other despite long-standing taboos, these two otherworldly beings found themselves at the center of a battle for a lost, enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782. Since then, they have fallen in love, traveled to Elizabethan England, dissolved the Covenant between the three species, and awoken the dark powers within Diana’s family line.
Now, 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.
In this stunning new novel, grand in scope, Deborah Harkness deepens the beloved world of All Souls with powerful new magic and long-hidden secrets, and the path Diana finds at Ravenswood leads to the most consequential moments yet in this cherished series.
Praise for The Black Bird Oracle: A Novel (All Souls Series #5)
Praise for The Black Bird Oracle
“The Black Bird Oracle was well worth the wait: Not only does it reunite us with the powerful love story of Diana and Matthew, it deftly explores the nexus of memory, history, and parenthood—the magic, pain, and promises mothers pass onto their children. Harkness’s lush prose makes a fantastical world real enough to touch; her characters are so real they feel like family.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult
Praise for Deborah Harkness and the All Souls series
“Packed with gorgeous historical detail and a gutsy, brainy heroine to match . . . [Deborah] Harkness writes with thrilling gusto about the magical world.”—Entertainment Weekly
“A scintillating paranormal story . . . Discover why everyone’s talking about this magical book.”—USA Today
“Romantic, erudite, and suspenseful . . . Harkness attends to every scholarly and emotional detail with whimsy, sensuality, and humor.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
“A wonderfully imaginative grown-up fantasy with all the magic of Harry Potter or Twilight . . . An irresistible tale of wizardry, science, and forbidden love.”—People
“Harkness has immersed and spellbound readers with her alternative universe. . . . Her ambitious melding of scientific and historical detail is inventive and brings surprising depth. . . . Brims with sensuality, intrigue, violence, and much-welcome humor.”—Los Angeles Times
“The charm in Deborah Harkness’s wildly successful All Souls trilogy lies not merely in the spells that its creature characters cast as they lurk pretty much in plain sight of humans, but in the adroit way Harkness has insinuated her world of demons, witches, and vampires into ours. . . . Harkness casts her own indelible spell of enchantment, heartbreak, and resilience. . . . She is terrific at bringing her magic world to life.”—The Boston Globe
“A tale of life-ever-after, romance, and family drama, and it is gloriously entertaining.”—Bustle
“Harkness works her own form of literary alchemy by deftly blending fantasy, romance, history, and horror into one completely bewitching book.”—Chicago Tribune
