While the fantasy world is still rocking from the Twilight phenomenon, one author is attempting to bring adult contemporary fantasy novels back.Deborah Harkness, with her debut novel and New York Times bestseller A Discovery of Witches, is poised to return fantasy to an adult audience.Set in modern day Europe and America, the novel is told through the eyes of outstanding academic scholar and in-denial witch, Diana Bishop.Dianas travels to continue her studies in the history of alchemy quickly become far more dangerous.When she opens a long-lost manuscript and magical creatures suddenly appear in her life, Diana finds herself wrapped up in a fantastical world of magic and mystery.Begrudgingly teaming up with a vampire scientist, Diana must learn the story behind this mysterious manuscript and find out what it means to be magical in the modern day world.What sets this book apart in todays market is that while covering the fantasy basics of magical development and an unlikely love story, Discovery does not focus on angst and romantic foreplay but sticks to a relatively realistic plot and cast of characters.While Matthew Clairmont, the vampire love interest, is stereotypically brooding and obsessed with morality, the relationship between Diana and Clairmont is quite the opposite.Harkness does not gloss over any issues that a witch and vampire might have with being together.She doesnt smooth over personalities to make them fit and there is no clichd love-at-first-sight.Harkness also stirs troubling philosophical insights into this first installment of her All Souls trilogy.Diana spends her life distancing herself from magic, staying away from other covens, and dedicating her life to the history of magics opposite: science.Of all the details this book has to offer, I find the give and take of Dianas struggle with the morality of magic most intriguing.No fantasy novel that I have read has tackled this subject so astutely.The second book in the Deborah Harkness All Souls trilogy, Shadow of Night, is in stores now.