Harkness, Deborah. A Discovery of Witches

Diana Bishop is the last in a long line of witches who can trace their ancestry back to the Salem Witch Trials and beyond. She has rejected her magical heritage, however, in the wake of her parents’ terrible deaths when she was a child. A historian, she is studying her chosen subject—the history of alchemy—in Oxford when she discovers a strange manuscript that has been bewitched and lost for centuries. Suddenly, she finds herself the focus of the interest and hostility of every witch, vampire, and daemon in England.  Only her new-found relationship with Matthew Clairmont, a vampire scientist, may save her. But that relationship might be the downfall of both, as well, as such cross-species are strictly forbidden—and the penalty is death.

“A Discovery of Witches” is just the first in a series about Diana and Matthew, and the ending is left very open, with nothing resolved. Despite some slightly uneven pacing, readers are sure to be hooked by both the centuries-old mystery of the lost manuscript and the forbidden love affair between the protagonists.