“A Discovery of Witches” author Deborah Harkness shares an exclusive excerpt from “The Black Bird Oracle”
Harkness' heroine, Diana Bishop, comes up against a less-than-friendly coven of witches in this excerpt.
Deborah Harkness is back to cast a spell over your summer.
The bestselling author of the All Souls novels returns to the world of Diana Bishop and Matthew De Clermont with her latest novel, The Black Bird Oracle, coming to shelves on July 16.
"In antiquity, oracles could be people, places, or things," Harkness tells Entertainment Weekly of the book's mysterious title. "In this case, the black bird oracle is all three — there is a black bird oracle who is a person, a black bird oracle who is a bird in New Haven, and a black bird oracle that is an inanimate object."
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The novel continues the story of witch Diana Bishop and vampire Matthew de Clairmont, whose love and ancient magic undid centuries of legal prejudice against the intermingling of creatures. Harkness' original All Souls trilogy topped numerous bestseller lists and was adapted into a television series, A Discovery of Witches, starring Teresa Palmer and Matthew Goode.
In The Black Bird Oracle, Diana and Matthew are faced with a new challenge — an ultimatum from the Congregation to test the magic of their 7-year-old twins, Pip and Rebecca. But Diana can’t face the prospect of her children being spellbound as she once was, instead turning to a long-lost relative, her great-aunt Gwyneth Proctor.
After receiving an invitation from Gwyneth, Diana journeys to Ravenswood, the Proctor family home, where she begins to confront her family’s dark past and reckon with her own desire for greater power. While Diana has learned much of her parents, the Bishop family line, and the de Clermonts, she now dives into a world of powerful new magic and long-held secrets. But is Diana truly ready to embrace her magic and identity as a witch?
"You'll have to wait and see," teases Harkness. "The real question should be, Is Matthew ready?"
"I’d deliberately left some big plot holes in the first four books — most of them surrounding Diana’s Proctor family lineage," Harkness notes. "People were so caught up with the Bishops and the de Clermonts they didn’t pay much attention to Stephen. The bigger the plot hole grew, the more I wanted to fill it! My working title for the book was Meet the Proctors."
"The books have always been about the complicated relationship between past and present," she continues. "But with a greater focus on the twins, past, present, and future are all knotted up — just as they are in real life. What’s the old saying of George Santayana? 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'"
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Harkness shares an excerpt from the novel, also featured here in audio, which showcases Diana’s anxiety-inducing first attempt to make contact with Gwyneth in person.
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Deborah Harkness; "The Black Bird Oracle"Excerpt from The Black Bird Oracle by Deborah Harkness
I drove into the center of Ipswich along Market Street, one of the town’s main thoroughfares, and pulled the Range Rover into a parking spot outside a thriving café called The Thirsty Goat.
Outside, under a swinging sign with an image of a goat in seventeenth-century clothing tipping his head back to drain a goblet, the tables were filled with a wide range of locals: young mothers sipping lattes, their children parked next to them in strollers; old salts in overalls and worn base-ball caps clutching paper cups full of steaming brew; and people with laptops clicking away at their email while downing mochas. The Thirsty Goat was clearly the hub of the local community.
It was also the perfect place to ask for directions to Ravenswood. Though I’d plugged Gwyneth’s zip code and the word Ravenswood intothe navigation system when I left New Haven, the directions had only landed me here in the center of town. Without a street name and number, I was going to have to rely on local knowledge to find my great-aunt.
I turned off the ignition and grabbed my tote bag from the passenger seat. I was in desperate need of hot tea to revive my courage before meeting Gwyneth Proctor for the first time.
When my feet touched the pavement, a nudging tingle filled the air as though a thousand witches were blowing kisses. My eyes swept the crowd, looking in vain for a witch among the prams and baseball caps, but I couldn’t locate the source of the warning that witches were nearby.
My senses on high alert, I entered the café. It was a cheerful space with a lofty beamed ceiling. The crisp white on the rafters extended down until it met chair-height red paneling, and the work of local artists covered the walls. The cozy atmosphere turned chilly as I felt the strong probe of a witch’s gaze. Then another.
Behind the café’s counter stood two witches. One had wild black hair piled into a topknot and a nose ring. Her arms were covered with tattoos: a new moon, an owl feather, a moth, a tarot card, and more that were hidden in the sleeve of her black T-shirt. Embroidered on her apron was a name — Ann — along with a vivid rendering of the High Priestess card from the Rider-Waite tarot deck. The other witch had a colder, more forbidding air. Her apron was embroidered with the name Meg, and the Queen of Pentacles was displayed across the bib. Meg wore a pin that read COVEN MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE.
Not even the most obtuse human could overlook that these were witches. As if to prove it, I spied one of the industrial Italian coffee machines that Matthew adored. Though not a cauldron, it was black and set in a prominent place. Occasionally, it discharged a puff of steam. A sign taped to it read NO CAPPUCCINOS UNDER THE BALSAMIC MOON DUE TO POWER SURGES. TAKE YOUR COMPLAINTS THE TOPSFIELD COVEN.
“Can we help you?” Ann’s tone was brisk, her power carefully banked and managed. It was not wild like the power of the elemental witches in London’s Rede, or delicate and precise like a weaver who made new spells.The image that came to mind was that of a highly trained, magical figure skater willing to patiently inscribe modest school figures in the ice so that she could explode later into effortless quadruple spins.
I smiled brightly. “A hot tea with milk, no sugar. To go.” I was grateful that my order wasn’t restricted by the lunar cycle since I had no idea what phase the moon was in at present.
“Our specialty tea is Witches’ Brew. It’s not on the menu, but it’s a town favorite.” Meg’s lips rose in a sardonic smile, the force of her stare intensifying. She had strange, mottled eyes that contained different hues: sea-glass green and bark brown, a mixture of water and earth.
“No eye of newt?” I asked sweetly, fishing for the wallet inside my Bodleian tote bag.
“Only in sorbet,” came Ann’s quick reply.
“English Breakfast would be fine,” I said, refusing to take the bait. These two may enjoy going full witch on the tourists who had straggled in from nearby Salem, but I wasn’t going to encourage them.
“Anything else?” Meg demanded, her eyes narrow with suspicion.“Everything all right, Meg?” A slight woman with jet hair iced with white and holding a parasol to shield her skin from the sun entered the café, power and magic following her like Cinderella’s train at the ball. The witch studied us from behind round, rose-colored glasses.
“Just an unexpected visitor,” Ann said, placing a slight emphasis on the last word. What she meant was witch. Did Ipswich’s coven require magical passports for creatures like me?
“It’s under control, Goody Wu.” Meg bristled at the unwanted interference.
Goody was an old-fashioned form of address, and one that I’d not heard uttered in a community of witches since I timewalked to Elizabethan London.
“Oh, I think not,” Goody Wu said softly, breathing out a stream of sea glass–tinged air that sparkled and chimed in the light. It reached me in curious wisps that tickled my ears and slid up my nostrils. “Quite the opposite.”
How many witches were in this town? I’d been here less than ten minutes, and I’d already met three.
“Hellooo!” A tall, slender willow of a witch breezed through the door, adding another creature to my tally. She was wearing a pink canvas bucket hat emblazoned with a griffin and the kind of plaid madras shorts my mother had worn in the early 1980s, when preppy was high fashion. A messy ponytail attempted to capture her blond-and-gray hair, the length of it bundled up under the brim of her hat. An enameled pin proclaimed her to be MISTRESS OF COVEN CEREMONIES. As she drew closer, I could see that her energy and agility, along with her delicate features, had made me think that she was far younger than the fine lines around her eyes indicated.
“Welcome home, coz!”
I looked around to see whom the witch was greeting. After an uncomfortable pause, I realized she was referring to me.
“Hi.” I waved weakly.
The witch flung her arms around me, knocking her own hat off in her enthusiasm. She whispered into my ear, “I’m Julie Eastey. Just play along and I’ll get you out of here.”
Excerpted with permission of Penguin Random House Audio from The Black Bird Oracle by Deborah Harkness; Read by Jennifer Ikeda ? 2024, Deborah Harkness, ? Penguin Random House, LLC.
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