8 books like A Discovery of Witches, from Shadow of Night to The Night Circus: witchy romance, scholarly fantasy, and forbidden supernatural love.
Updated June 11, 2026
Deborah Harkness's A Discovery of Witches works because of an unusual combination: it is a paranormal romance written by an actual historian of science. Diana Bishop, a Yale historian and reluctant witch, calls up a long-lost alchemical manuscript in Oxford's Bodleian Library, and suddenly every witch, vampire, and daemon in Europe wants it, including Matthew Clairmont, a 1,500-year-old vampire geneticist. The forbidden romance is the engine, but the texture is libraries, wine, alchemy, yoga, and academic politics, a Twilight for readers who wanted footnotes. That mix of scholarship and swoon is what most readers are trying to find again.
No single book replicates it, so this list splits by what you loved. If you want the continuation, Shadow of Night is the direct sequel and the obvious next read. If the witchcraft and strong heroines drew you, The Witch's Heart and Serpent & Dove keep the witches center stage. If you want the atmosphere of secret magical worlds and slow-burning romance, The Night Circus and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue carry that. And if you want sprawling supernatural world-building with hidden societies, The Bone Season, City of Bones, and A Court of Thorns and Roses go bigger and faster.
One practical note: several of these are series openers (The Bone Season, City of Bones, Serpent & Dove, A Court of Thorns and Roses), so check your appetite for commitment before starting. The All Souls trilogy itself runs three main volumes plus follow-ups, so if you have only read book one, the easiest answer is already waiting.
Read this first; it is the direct sequel and the trilogy gets more historical, not less.
Shadow of Night picks up exactly where A Discovery of Witches ends, with Diana and Matthew timewalking to Elizabethan London in search of the manuscript Ashmole 782 and a teacher for Diana's unruly magic. This is where Harkness's day job pays off most: the 1590s setting is dense with real figures (Christopher Marlowe, John Dee, Walter Raleigh, the School of Night) and the kind of period detail about alchemy, printing, and court politics that only a working historian would bother to get right.
It is a slower, thicker book than the first, more historical novel than thriller, and readers who came mainly for the contemporary romance sometimes find the middle stretch heavy. But if the Bodleian scenes were your favorite part of book one, this is the volume where the series becomes fully itself. There is no real decision to make here: if you liked A Discovery of Witches, the trilogy (it concludes with The Book of Life) is the first thing to finish before branching out.
Read this if the enchanted atmosphere and slow-burn romance mattered more than the vampires.
Erin Morgenstern's novel shares the qualities Discovery readers most often name: a hidden magical world layered invisibly over the real one, two gifted magic users bound together by forces older than themselves, and a romance that builds slowly through wonder rather than urgency. Celia and Marco are pitted against each other in a lifelong magical competition staged inside a mysterious black-and-white circus, and the book's pleasure is its sensory richness, much as Harkness's is her libraries and wine cellars.
The differences: there are no witches, vampires, or daemon taxonomies, no contemporary setting, and far less plot momentum. Morgenstern's story drifts where Harkness's chases a manuscript. Pick this when you want to sink into atmosphere and prose, and skip it if what you actually loved was the species politics and the research-thriller spine. It is a standalone, which after a trilogy can feel like a relief.
Read this if Diana's witchcraft, not Matthew's vampirism, was the draw.
Genevieve Gornichec's debut retells Norse mythology from the point of view of Angrboda, the witch who loves the trickster god Loki and bears his three strange children, the wolf, the serpent, and the girl who becomes ruler of the dead. Like A Discovery of Witches, it centers a powerful woman whose magic makes her hunted, a love affair across categories that others condemn, and the question of what a mother will do to protect extraordinary children, a theme Harkness's later books lean into as well.
It is quieter and sadder than Harkness, a character study moving toward Ragnarok rather than a page-turner, and the romance with Loki is thornier and less wish-fulfilling than Diana and Matthew. There is no contemporary or academic frame at all. Choose it if you want witchcraft taken seriously as a woman's power and burden, and you are open to mythology retelling as the vehicle. It is a standalone and works with zero prior Norse knowledge.
Read this if the forbidden romance was the engine and you want it turned up.
Sarah J. Maas's series opener is the natural next stop for readers who came to Harkness for the cross-species love story. Feyre, a mortal huntress, kills a faerie wolf and is taken to the faerie lands of Prythian as payment, where the Beauty and the Beast bones of the story give way to courtly politics, ancient curses, and a romance with much higher heat than Harkness writes. The dynamic of a dangerous, centuries-old immortal drawn to a mortal woman who refuses to be managed maps almost exactly onto Matthew and Diana.
What you lose is the scholarship. There are no libraries, manuscripts, or historical texture; Maas's world-building is broad-strokes fantasy, and the prose is functional rather than rich. The series also shifts noticeably toward romantasy conventions as it goes, with later books steamier and more battle-heavy. Pick it for emotional intensity and addictive pacing, not for the cerebral pleasures of the All Souls books.
Read this if you want a hidden supernatural society with bigger stakes and a tougher heroine.
Samantha Shannon's series shares Harkness's core architecture: a contemporary-feeling world with a concealed supernatural order, a heroine whose rare gift makes her both prize and target, and a slow-building bond with a powerful non-human male whose motives stay uncertain for a long time. Paige Mahoney is a clairvoyant in a dystopian 2059 London where her kind are criminalized, until she is captured and taken to a secret city controlled by the otherworldly Rephaim.
It is harder-edged than A Discovery of Witches, more dystopian thriller than romance, and the love story is a slow undercurrent rather than the engine. The dense clairvoyant taxonomy in the opening chapters asks some patience, much as Harkness's creature politics do. Choose it if Diana's growth into her power was your favorite arc and you would trade wine-and-libraries comfort for grit and momentum. Note the commitment: the series is planned at seven books and still growing.
Read this if you loved an immortal's long memory colliding with one mortal life.
V.E. Schwab's novel speaks to the part of A Discovery of Witches that is really about time. Matthew's centuries of accumulated history, grief, and secrets are half his appeal, and Addie LaRue makes that longevity the whole subject: a French girl trades her soul in 1714 for freedom and lives three hundred years cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets, until a young man in a New York bookshop remembers her. Like Harkness, Schwab moves between past and present, using historical interludes to give her immortal real weight.
It is a standalone literary fantasy rather than a series, with no witches, vampires, or hidden societies, and the magic is a single devil's bargain rather than a system. The pace is reflective, sometimes slow, and the payoff is emotional rather than plotted. Pick it when you want the romance and the centuries without the creature politics, and when you are in the mood for something more bittersweet than the All Souls books allow themselves to be.
Read this if you want the hidden world of warring supernatural factions, in a faster YA package.
Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments opener gives you the same basic pleasure as Harkness's creature world: an ordinary-seeming city (here New York) layered with a secret society of Shadowhunters, plus vampires, werewolves, warlocks, and faeries bound by old accords and older grudges. Clary Fray's discovery that she belongs to this hidden world mirrors Diana's arc of suppressed heritage and emerging power, and both stories turn on a hunted object everyone wants, the Mortal Cup standing in for Ashmole 782.
This is YA, and it reads like it: quippy, fast, and aimed younger, with a teenage love triangle in place of Harkness's adult marriage-of-equals romance. The prose and the emotional stakes are simpler, and the series sprawls across many books and spinoffs. Choose it when you want comfort-food urban fantasy you can inhale, and skip it if the grown-up sensibility of A Discovery of Witches was precisely the point.
Read this for witches and witch hunters forced together, enemies-to-lovers style.
Shelby Mahurin's novel takes the conflict Harkness builds her world on, witches versus those sworn to destroy them, and compresses it into a single combustible marriage. Louise le Blanc is a witch hiding in the city of Cesarine; Reid Diggory is a Church witch hunter; a public scandal forces them to wed. The forbidden-bond premise scratches the same itch as Diana and Matthew, two people whose kinds are ancient enemies discovering each other as individuals, with the added spark that these two start out genuinely loathing each other.
It is YA-crossover romantasy in a loosely French-flavored fantasy world, so you trade Harkness's Oxford realism and historical depth for banter, action, and a brisker pace. The theology and witchcraft are story furniture rather than researched systems. Pick it when you want the romance dynamic front and center with real tension behind it, and be aware it opens a trilogy that grows darker as it goes.
Start with A Discovery of Witches, then Shadow of Night, then The Book of Life, which completes the original trilogy. Harkness has continued the universe with Time's Convert, which follows Marcus, and The Black Bird Oracle, which returns to Diana. Read the trilogy in order first; the follow-ups assume you know how it ends.
What is the closest book to A Discovery of Witches?
Nothing matches its exact blend of academic life, history of science, and vampire romance, which is why the sequel Shadow of Night is the honest first answer. Among other authors, The Bone Season offers the closest structural match (a gifted heroine inside a hidden supernatural order with a slow-burn bond), while A Court of Thorns and Roses is closest in romantic dynamic.
Are these books as steamy as A Discovery of Witches?
It varies widely. A Court of Thorns and Roses runs considerably steamier, especially from its second book onward. Serpent & Dove and City of Bones are YA, so the romance stays more restrained. The Night Circus, The Witch's Heart, and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue are closer to Harkness's slow-burn register, where longing carries more weight than explicit scenes.
Do I need to like vampires to enjoy these recommendations?
No. Only Shadow of Night and City of Bones feature vampires prominently. The rest trade in witches (The Witch's Heart, Serpent & Dove), faeries (A Court of Thorns and Roses), clairvoyants and otherworldly beings (The Bone Season), or magic without creature taxonomies at all (The Night Circus, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue). The common thread is hidden magic and forbidden or fated bonds, not vampirism.
As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. · About & methodology
