The All Souls Real-time Reading Companion

By Deborah Harkness

From the bestselling author of The Black Bird Oracle comes a richly illustrated real-time reading guide that brings to life the world created by Deborah Harkness in the All Souls series, retracing the events of the bestselling novels with illuminating behind-the-scenes details.

Look for the hit series “A Discovery of Witches,” now streaming on AMC+, Sundance Now, and Shudder!

A world of witches, vampires, and daemons.
A manuscript that holds the secrets of their past and the key to their future.
Diana and Matthew—the forbidden love at the heart of the adventure.
 
This real-time reading companion follows the first three novels in the All Souls series: A Discovery of Witches, Shadow of Night, and The Book of Life. Use it to re-immerse yourself in their enchanting fantasy world and enrich your experience of the fascinating series Deborah Harkness has created.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Nov 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781101992968

Deborah Harkness

Deborah Harkness is the number one New York Times bestselling author of A Discovery of Witches, Shadow of Night, and The Book of Life. A history professor at the University of Southern California, Harkness has received Fulbright, Guggenheim, and National Humanities Center fellowships. She lives in Los Angeles. Visit www.deborahharkness.com and follow “Deborah Harkness” on Facebook and @DebHarkness on Twitter.    

Book preview

PENGUIN BOOKS

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New York, New York 10014

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Copyright © 2015 by Deborah Harkness

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Author photo: Vania Stoyanova

The photograph credits at the end of this e-book constitute an extension of this copyright page.

ISBN 978-1-101-99296-8

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design and illustrations based on original series design by Tal Goretsky. Art: (sun) from The Celestial Atlas, or The Harmony of the Universe by Andreas Cellarius / Bridgeman Images; (front symbol and clouds) from Utriusque Cosmi Historia by Robert Fludd / Archives Charmet / Bridgeman Images.

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

About the Book

About Deborah Harkness

Praise for Deborah Harkness

A Discovery of Witches

Real-time Reading Calendar

Real-time Reading Companion Notes

Shadow of Night

Real-time Reading Calendar

Real-time Reading Companion Notes

The Inspiration for A Discovery of Witches and the All Souls trilogy

Discover The World Of . . .

Photograph Credits

Excerpt from A Discovery of Witches

About the Book

It began with A Discovery of Witches. It continued with Shadow of Night. Now, as The Book of Life has brought Deborah Harkness’s stunning No.1 internationally bestselling trilogy to its finale, enrich your experience of the heart-stopping conclusion by stepping deeper into the fantasy world Deborah has created.

This exclusive All Souls trilogy real-time reading guide brings to life A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night with exciting behind-the-scenes extra content.

If you are a new reader, you can immerse yourself in the real-time world of the All Souls trilogy by following this chapter-by-chapter timeline, enjoying Deborah’s fascinating background notes along the way (caution: there will be spoilers for new readers so don’t get ahead of yourself). For those avid fans who have already read and loved the books, why not step back into Diana and Matthew’s enchanting story. Here collected for you exclusively in one volume are some of the wonderful notes Deborah has shared about the people, places, music and history that inspired her when writing the books.

About Deborah Harkness

‘I began to wonder, If there really are witches and vampires, what do they do for a living? A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES is the unexpected answer to that question.’

Deborah Harkness is a historian of science and a professor of history at the University of Southern California. The recipient of fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Humanities Center, Harkness has also been awarded the History of Science Society’s Pfizer Award and Derek Price Prize, and the North American Conference on British Studies’ John Ben Snow Prize. She spent several years in Oxford doing research (and really did once find a missing manuscript in the Bodleian Library!). She has written The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution as well as the three books of the highly acclaimed and internationally bestselling All Souls trilogy.

Praise for the All Souls Trilogy

‘A stirring, poignant saga.’

—Us Weekly

‘Romantic, erudite, and suspenseful . . . Harkness attends to every scholarly and emotional detail with whimsy, sensuality, and humor.’

—O, The Oprah Magazine

‘Packed with gorgeous historical detail and a gutsy, brainy heroine to match . . . Harkness writes with thrilling gusto about the magical world.’

—Entertainment Weekly

‘With this series, Harkness has woven a one-of-a-kind web of magic, science, history, and fiction. This story, which centers around the search for a magical book, is infinitely rich and multifaceted. . . . Diana and Matthew’s epic adventure proves that love, empathy, and fearless determination have the true power to change everything.’

—USA Today

‘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

‘Brims with sensuality, intrigue, violence, and much-welcome humor . . . Harkness has immersed and spellbound readers with her alternative universe. . . . Her ambitious melding of scientific and historical detail is inventive and brings surprising depth.’

—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, maintaining a fast-paced, page-turning narrative.’

—The Boston Globe

‘This trilogy is a superlative example in a subgenre you could call realistic fantasy—think Harry Potter but for grown-ups or Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Witches, vampires, and daemons exist, along with time travel. But this world also is recognizably ours, not a wholly made-up setting like George R.R. Martin’s Westeros. When done well, as it is here, this sort of fiction provides characters who are recognizably human in their desires and actions even if most of them are creatures with supernatural powers. Through them Harkness succeeds at the hardest part of writing fantasy: She makes this world so real that you believe it