Deborah Harkness

Deborah Harkness (born 1965) is an American scholar, novelist and wine enthusiast, best known as a historian and as the author of the All Souls Trilogy, which consists of The New York Times best-selling novel A Discovery of Witches and its sequels Shadow of Night and The Book of Life. Her latest book is Time's Convert, both an origin story of the trilogy’s Marcus Whitmore character, set in the American War of Independence and the French Revolution, and a sequel to the All Souls Trilogy. 2Early life Born in 1965, Harkness grew up near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of an American-born father and a British-born mother. She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College (B.A., 1986), Northwestern University (M.A., 1990), and the University of California, Davis (Ph.D., 1994). Harkness also studied abroad at Oxford University. She is a well-regarded historian of science and medicine, as well as having studied alchemy, magic and the occult. 2Career Harkness is a professor of history and teaches European history and the history of science at the University of Southern California. She has published two works of historical non-fiction, John Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy and the End of Nature (1999) and The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (2007).In 2011, Harkness published her first work of fiction, A Discovery of Witches. The first novel in the All Souls trilogy, A Discovery of Witches is a historical fiction novel that tells the story of a modern-day witch who inadvertently calls up an ancient enchanted manuscript at Oxford University's Bodleian Library thereby attracting the unwelcome notice of a host of magical creatures who live among humans, including other witches, daemons, and a 1,500-year-old French vampire. The novel debuted at number two on The New York Times Best Seller hardcover fiction list, and has been sold in at least 34 countrie