Excerpts-

• From the cover Chapter 1
  
  In every soul, there is a place reserved for Shadow.
  
  Mine was safely hidden, tucked in a blind spot at the corners of my memory, under a hollow bruise that I thought had healed long ago.
  
  Then the ravens came to New Haven, carrying an invitation that neither Shadow nor I could refuse.
  
  It was a Friday in late May when the invitation arrived.
  
  “Hey, Professor Bishop! I just put your last mail delivery through the slot!”
  
  I’d been woolgathering on the familiar route home from my office at Yale, listening with half of my attention to Becca’s excited chatter while the rest of my mind drifted. I hadn’t noticed that we’d arrived at the ornate iron gate that guarded our house on Orange Street, or that our regular mail carrier, Brenda, was just leaving the property.
  
  “Thanks, Brenda,” I said, giving her a limp smile. The heat was withering. It was always like this in New Haven around graduation time, which led to frazzled tempers, damp academic regalia, and long lines for iced lattes at the city’s many coffee shops.
  
  “You must be excited about getting back to England, Becca,” Brenda said. She was already wearing her USPS bucket hat and shorts, prepared for New Haven’s warmer temperatures and sky-high humidity.
  
  “I am.” Becca hopped from one foot to the next to prove it. “It’s Tamsy’s first trip and I get to show her everything.”
  
  Tamsy was a recent addition to the family: one of the historical dolls that were all the rage among the thirteen-and-under set. Marcus and his mate, Phoebe, had chosen the colonial era doll for Becca because of her fondness for Marcus’s house in Hadley, and her delight in the stories he told about growing up there in the 1760s and 1770s. Though she had been given a different name by the manufacturer, Becca had rebaptized her the moment she had seen the doll’s green eyes and red hair peeking out from the box’s clear, round window.
  
  Since receiving the doll, Becca’s active imagination had been fully engaged with Tamsy and her world. She came with a variety of outfits and accessories that helped Becca bring her to life, including a horse named Penny. Tamsy was well supplied with home furnishings, too. Matthew added to them with a small replica of the Windsor chair at Marcus’s house that had once belonged to Grand-père Philippe and a Tamsy-sized version of a painted Hadley chest like the one Phoebe used to store household linens. It was fitted with a tiny lock, and Becca had already packed Tamsy’s clothes, her schoolbooks, her quill pen and ink pot, and her collection of hats for the journey to England.
  
  Brenda gave Tamsy, who was hanging from Becca’s hand, a wave. She turned to me. “You must be excited to get back to your research, too.”
  
  At the end of every school year, Matthew and I would take the children to England, where we spent the summer months at our house in Woodstock. It was only a few miles outside Oxford, which put me within easy reach of the Bodleian Library and made it possible for Matthew to work in his quiet Oxford University laboratory, with no colleagues or graduate students to interrupt him. Becca and her brother, Pip, had acres of land to roam, hundreds of trees to climb, and a house filled with curious treasures and books to occupy them during the inevitable summer downpours. There were trips to France to see Matthew’s mother, Ysabeau, over long, lazy weekends, and a chance to see more of Marcus and Phoebe, who would spend part of their summer in London.
  
  I...

Reviews-

• 

  July 15, 2024
  Bestseller Harkness carries the contemporary fantasy world of her All Souls series (after 2018’s Time’s Convert) into a new generation with this messy adventure. Pip and Becca, the seven-year-old hybrid vampire-witch twins of New England witch Diana Bishop and French vampire geneticist Matthew de Clermont, are due to be examined for their own eerie talents by the shadowy Congregation. Diana, fearful for them and anxious yet eager to expand her own higher-magic powers, is summoned by ravens to meet her father’s relatives in Ravenswood, near Ipswich, Mass., where she and her children endure occult meetings with assorted family ghosts. She also receives magical tarot coaching from Great-Aunt Gwyneth and battles inimical local witch Meg. Matthew, previously the series’ wolfish romantic lead, here subsides into a supportive househusband so that Diana, fueled by rabid curiosity and sluiced with endless tea, can pursue her supernatural vocation. There’s little heat for romantasy fans to latch onto, and the payoff of the twins’ testing is made to wait for future installments. Readers will wish they had an annotated family tree to understand the tangled web of Diana’s relations. The result is ambitious, long-winded, and a bit of a muddle.

• Narrator Jennifer Ikeda reintroduces listeners to power couple Diana and Matthew de Claremont, witch and vampire, and their equally magical children. The couple first appeared in A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES. When a black bird brings Diana a message, she heads to Ravenswood, her Aunt Gwyneth's property in Massachusetts, to uncover the dark side of her magic. Ikeda brings every corner of Ravenswood to life, pointing out its marshes, barns, and haunted woods in warm, wondrous tones. Every creature--whether human, witch, vampire, demon, or specter--has a unique voice, and conversations are always clear for listeners, even when Harkness's story falters. Fans of the novels will relish Ikeda's verbal world-building and character profiles. Her narration illuminates the shadowy paths Diana now chooses to tread. C.A. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

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